To: finnman69
I disagree.
I think this design is beautiful, imaginative, and will become a great tourist spot.
The old towers were totally unimaginative & look how attached we got to them. The idea of vertical gardens--everyone will come view them. It's a kind of living museum and a wonderful metaphor.
49 posted on
02/27/2003 7:10:12 PM PST by
equus
To: equus; Aquinasfan
I don't disagree that the idea of the sky gardens sounds nice, I just question the cost and if we need a memorial in the sky and in the 'pit'. Building a 30 story super slender greenhouse 1/3 of a mile into the sky taking into account wondloads, seismic loads, incorporating elevators, stairs, escalators, etc, will be a challenge as well as extremely expensive engineering wise. There are some brilliant structural engineers out there who will solve the problem, but I can guarantee you it wont be cheap.
My preference with this scheme would be to make the sky gardens the main memorial, and the footprints some other type of private memorial for the familes perhaps.
I also don't mind angular buildings if there is a coherence to them and level of detail that is not alien, nor inhuman in scale. The old WTC was a good example of buildings with no scale. The renderings of the proposal at the street level scale are bizarre and quite ugly. At the city scape level, I have less of a problem.
Modern architecture has radically changed since the invention of CAD (computer aided design) programs. I am a fan of designing architecture on the computer, but I always treat it as a tool. I fear that just because you are capable of designing bizarre angular forms on the computer and quickly rendering them on the computer by no means guarantees good architecture.
I tend to dislike Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman, & Daniel Liebskind buildings because I view them as either mathematical design iterations, or simply as sculpture alone. Good architecture IMO involves a total integration of structure, space, detail, concept carried throughout the project, surface, materials, scale and most importantly proportion. Proportion is what separates the men from the boys in architecture. Slight differences make all the difference visually and spatially. The character of neighborhhods are determined largely by proportion and scale. Liebskind strikes me as an architect who does not understand proportion or scale.
In fact, Liebskinds buildings tend to ignore his surroundings, nor do they relate to a human scale. His choice of materials is industrial and in my opinion harsh.
Back to the design. My biggest issue is the large open pit which is a horrible urban decision. For all the reasons the WTC plaza was bad urbanistically, this huge open treench will be equally bad.
60 posted on
02/28/2003 7:34:06 AM PST by
finnman69
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