Gaudi bid for Twin Towers memorial (NEW WTC DESIGN)

The Times ^ | January 23, 2003 | Nicholas Wapshott

[MadIvan]

A SOARING, glass-domed tower designed nearly a century ago by the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí has become the latest entry in the competition to find a replacement for New York’s twin towers.

Grand design: Antoni Gaudi's 1908 commission

Gaudí, the architect of the Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona, was commissioned in 1908 to build his 1,181ft-tall hotel, to be topped by a public observation platform in the shape of an enormous glass star, in Lower Manhattan, but the project was never realised.

Now Paul Laffoley, a Boston-based architect, has teamed up with scholars and artists from Barcelona to revive Gaudí’s dream, with the new structure decorated with artefacts from the fallen twin towers as a memorial to those who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The revised plans will be unveiled at the City University of New York graduate centre tonight.

“A lot of the other proposals are literal ego trips, but here is a way that everyone can be involved in a historical project from around the world,” Mr Laffoley said. “The Sagrada Familia has become the symbol of Barcelona and Gaudí meant his hotel to be the symbol of New York.”

“If they only knew about this building, the people of New York would come to love it,” Marc Mascort, who has made computer models of the building, said. “Bringing this to New York would be more important than the Olympic Games.”

A decision about what should eventually fill the site at Ground Zero has been repeatedly delayed by confusion about who is entitled to be the final arbiter, with the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the site owner, the site lessees and Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, all claiming the final say.

[hellinahandcart]

Not only that, but their placement in the skyline was *inspired*, especially from certain vantage points like Staten Island.

I look at the other proposals and wonder if any of the architects bothered to consider what their massive, hideous, chunky brainchildren would do to the greatest skyline in the world.

[GOP_Proud]

I've always thought that building them back just as they were would be quite a statement.

[OldFriend]

The Gaudi in Barcelona is still not complete!! That would be just about right for the WTC site. They'll still be fighting about it for another hundred years.

[hellinahandcart]

That's always been my first preference. Leave the footprints of the original towers, rebuild directly to the north. There's plenty of room to do that and more.

[Dajjal]

Antoni Gaudi bump

[Oschisms]

The roblem with the first designs was that they were hamstrung by 1) the victim mentality that refuses to build on the footprints and 2) the directive that the new buildings hold the same amount of office space. The second set of plans were a result of letting the archeticts(sp) run wild and be creative.

Just rebuilding the old towers would be a thousand times more asthetically pleasing, yes.

But that doesn't change the fact that I hated the old towers. They looked like a spaceship landed in the middle of our skyline.

Or more accurately, they looked like someone built a 1970's building smack in the middle of a bunch of 1900-1930's buildings.

[ricpic]

The only proposal for the site of the WTC that is both beautiful and inspiring is called PHOENIXI. It can be accessed at PHOENIXI.ORG or PHOENIXI.COM

Please take a minute to view it.

If some of you are as impressed by it as I am, maybe you could post it here on FR. I don't have the technical knowhow.

Thank you.

[Salgak]

Perhaps they're trying to tell the terrorists that they're F***ed. . . (g)

[Petronski]

Does it have a vibrate setting?

[Exit148]

Looks like Gaudi had a phallus phixation.

Square the whole thing off, make a twin right beside it, make them taller and get rid of all the little pointy thingys.

[Miss Marple]

I am not sure I like it, but it seems to be an improvement over the things they showed the last time.

[poindexter]

"Build 'em just like they were!"

Nope. One story taller. Memorial on the ground floor.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

If I was an architect, I'd stop trying to be so darn creative and do an old time Art Deco skyscraper. Would fit in fine with the Woolworth building and the rest of downtown.

I agree with you. I was beginning to think I was the only one left who likes the Art Deco look. We still have two art deco theaters left where I live. They tore down all the others.

[nycgal]

If I was an architect, I'd stop trying to be so darn creative and do an old time Art Deco skyscraper. Would fit in fine with the Woolworth building and the rest of downtown.

I agree. I would love them to create something along the lines of the Chryser Building or Rockefeller Center.

[ricpic]

Thank you.

Could you set up a thread showing pictures of PHOENIXI in the News/Activism forum so that many more could see it and discuss it?

Thanks again.

[Stingray51]

I hate to sound cranky but I've been to Barcelona and that so-called cathedral is even uglier and more wacky looking than depicted here. It looks melted. And that's the way he designed it.

[nutmeg]

If I was an architect, I'd stop trying to be so darn creative and do an old time Art Deco skyscraper. Would fit in fine with the Woolworth building and the rest of downtown.

I also agree... count me in as an Art Deco fan, too. The Woolworth Building (1913) - which I think is designed in the Gothic Revival style - is one of my favorite NYC buildings.

[nutmeg]

;-D

[NativeNewYorker]

...and have all the urinals face Mecca.