The LMDC unveiled the plans for the new Snøhetta museum complex for the WTC site yesterday, thinking a sexy rendering would distract everyone from their awful site planning, and total lack of interest in the Performing Arts facility. It didn’t. Take a look here. They are certainly concerned about giving Calatrava’s glass hat the prominence it deserves, aren’t they? It’s not Snøhetta’s fault. They didn’t have many options.
They could, however, have avoided the overused and didactic scheme of building a big ramp. One would think, as Ourousoff notes, that perhaps a forced path is antithetical to the notion of ‘freedom’. And it a little hard to tell exactly where the Drawing Center is, sandwiched somewhere between the gaping atrium dictated by Calatrava, and the ramp to freedom that winds around the perimeter.
The failure of the ramp motif is due to the overbearing framing of the experience. One is constantly measuring their relative position from beginning to end, and given that culture is an almost undifferentiated commodity, consumption becomes the only way to assess our interactions. So everyone will feel like they must traverse the entire route, intensified by a mandate of responsibility to honor the victims and celebrate Patriotism.
That’s a shame because it appears (I have to note this because there apparently is something wrong with the Internet, making it impossible to publish a detailed or even readable plan of anything) that their handling of the entry is the most humane and interesting thing suggested since the rebuilding began. Of course, this might be a result of complete and total disinterest in security (or simply successful relocation). And if you think they won’t make you take your belt off to get in the symbol of freedom at the center of American immigration, let me buy you a ticket to the Statue of Liberty. A massive ramp that lifts off the ground with out soaring or imposing, it does something no other plan or concept shown so far has: it invites you to mill about, with direction or not, like, well a plaza should.
The building itself is a exercise in modernist skinning and computer pyrotechnics. Which is simply my curmudgeonly way of saying that I can’t quite tell what it is. It looks pretty, but since it lacks much detail in the way of assembly details, materials, or any articulation (if it hasn’t been made clear yet, seamless glass facades don’t do it for me), it’s hard to have a fixed opinion. It looks like a great deal of wood has been used, and that should be helpful, up against Calatrava’s metal butterfly and the memorial, which, I’m sorry to say, looks like two construction pits in the renderings. The various views are different enough that it’s hard to determine how the glass will be treated.
Overall, the building is squat, and, based on the information Ourousoff provides, only going to get more ungainly in form. Again, Snøhetta can only be faulted so much. Because they had this misfortune of coming later, and not soaring enough (or winning the Pritzker), they are forced to eat a number of program requirements that seem ill-advised. That their building looks like a complete and freestanding concept, rather than one that services two important program requirements that the master of engineering couldn’t fit on his site (well, one, light, it an effect of siting).
It’s not great, yet, though it may well be. Once the actual Freedom Center has a program (you think they are going to share it with the public first? Oh, the irony will fill many a drunken nights of Marxist literary critics and Orwell fans. Disclosure: I am, of course, both), perhaps the ramp can be modified. I’m just speculating. Still far from execution, I’ll settle for saying this is the outline of a good thing, the first time that has happened for the WTC site.
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Freedom on the march. March. March.
The LMDC unveiled the plans for the new Snøhetta museum complex for the WTC site yesterday, thinking a sexy rendering would distract everyone from their awful site planning, and total lack of interest in the Performing Arts facility. It didn’t. Take a look here. They are certainly concerned about giving Calatrava’s glass hat the prominence it deserves, aren’t they? It’s not Snøhetta’s fault. They didn’t have many options.
They could, however, have avoided the overused and didactic scheme of building a big ramp. One would think, as Ourousoff notes, that perhaps a forced path is antithetical to the notion of ‘freedom’. And it a little hard to tell exactly where the Drawing Center is, sandwiched somewhere between the gaping atrium dictated by Calatrava, and the ramp to freedom that winds around the perimeter. The failure of the ramp motif is due to the overbearing framing of the experience. One is constantly measuring their relative position from beginning to end, and given that culture is an almost undifferentiated commodity, consumption becomes the only way to assess our interactions. So everyone will feel like they must traverse the entire route, intensified by a mandate of responsibility to honor the victims and celebrate Patriotism. That’s a shame because it appears (I have to note this because there apparently is something wrong with the Internet, making it impossible to publish a detailed or even readable plan of anything) that their handling of the entry is the most humane and interesting thing suggested since the rebuilding began. Of course, this might be a result of complete and total disinterest in security (or simply successful relocation). And if you think they won’t make you take your belt off to get in the symbol of freedom at the center of American immigration, let me buy you a ticket to the Statue of Liberty. A massive ramp that lifts off the ground with out soaring or imposing, it does something no other plan or concept shown so far has: it invites you to mill about, with direction or not, like, well a plaza should. The building itself is a exercise in modernist skinning and computer pyrotechnics. Which is simply my curmudgeonly way of saying that I can’t quite tell what it is. It looks pretty, but since it lacks much detail in the way of assembly details, materials, or any articulation (if it hasn’t been made clear yet, seamless glass facades don’t do it for me), it’s hard to have a fixed opinion. It looks like a great deal of wood has been used, and that should be helpful, up against Calatrava’s metal butterfly and the memorial, which, I’m sorry to say, looks like two construction pits in the renderings. The various views are different enough that it’s hard to determine how the glass will be treated. Overall, the building is squat, and, based on the information Ourousoff provides, only going to get more ungainly in form. Again, Snøhetta can only be faulted so much. Because they had this misfortune of coming later, and not soaring enough (or winning the Pritzker), they are forced to eat a number of program requirements that seem ill-advised. That their building looks like a complete and freestanding concept, rather than one that services two important program requirements that the master of engineering couldn’t fit on his site (well, one, light, it an effect of siting). It’s not great, yet, though it may well be. Once the actual Freedom Center has a program (you think they are going to share it with the public first? Oh, the irony will fill many a drunken nights of Marxist literary critics and Orwell fans. Disclosure: I am, of course, both), perhaps the ramp can be modified. I’m just speculating. Still far from execution, I’ll settle for saying this is the outline of a good thing, the first time that has happened for the WTC site.