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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.

Perhaps you are right about the "pit", but we never can tell until we walk into something and feel it viscerally, as with Maya Lin.

I don't know what to say because I adore Frank Gehry although I worry he is overdoing his style, I'd like him to stop now or his buildings will start to become less precious. I think the Guggenheim Bilbao is total genius, and as you know, it put that town on the map, made it into a tourist attraction. Think how many local lives were improved through one building. The return on the cost is incalculable, and goes down through generations.

You may be right about the costs of the hanging gardens. I know nothing about this kind of thing, I just react aesthetically. The new space museum at the Museum of Natural History for exampe was probably horribly expensive but it is so inspiring, and it makes that one of the great museums of the world if it wasn't already. And that's what NY is about.

And something needs to be done about NY. I am thinking of leaving it myself. It has such a pall over it. A friend came in from Vancouver, and we went shopping etc. She hasn't been here in a while, she used to love NY. Well, in Barney's, I was stopped from taking pics of her w/ my digital camera, the same in the Radio & Television building lobby, then we saw garage attendants with radioactive/bomb sensors going over every single car including under the cars, that were waiting to park, and NYers don't even walk like they once did. This used to be like "roadrunner" city, everyone was on speed, rushing to get where they had to be or wanted to be, full of crazy energy. Now there is just a resignation and an emptiness. Something needs to be done and I think this is an attempt to do it. Whether it helps, who knows. NYers are in shock from going from the world meccas, the multicultural center of existence, to trying to adjust to the fact that they may be forever and ever the prime target of terrorism. It just doesn't work--you can't have both in one. As my friend commented, there has to be a price adjustment. The prices for meals are still ridiculous, and the city feels too dangerous and too depressed to make a case for spending that kind of $.