[finnman69]

HERE IS WHAT lIEBSKIND'S BUILDINGS REALLY LOOK LIKE! All those arbitrary angles and weird slashings are quite ugly in reality. They all look like wrecked shattered fragments. Not the most appropriate metaphor after the horrible destruction of the WTC.

http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/diary011703.asp

I hope I’m remembering this right, but in I think Evelyn Waugh’s novel Helena there is a scene where the Emperor Constantine summons a team of architects and sculptors to build him a triumphal arch, just like the triumphal arch the Romans built at the peak of their artistic powers two and three centuries before. He wants elaborate carvings, elegant draperies, realistic renditions of his conquering soldiers and conquered enemies.

The architects and sculptors are indignant. They tell him that no up-to-date emperor would want an arch covered with all of that old-fashioned ornament. Modern arches, they say, are clean and pure, stripped of all that classical junk. “But could you do it if you wanted to?” the emperor asks. An embarrassed silence. Finally they admit: No, no we couldn’t.

I keep thinking of that story as I look at the New York Times’ very interesting slide show of proposals for the rebuilding of Ground Zero. The most striking thing about all the designs on view is that none of them seem to show the slightest understanding of how people in cities use public spaces. The design that seems to have most impressed the authorities in New York, by Daniel Liebskind, amounts to basically a giant sunken below-ground public space – ie, just the kind of space that had to be torn up in front of the GM building at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street because nobody wanted to go down there. Liebskind’s space would be even worse. It is bigger for one thing and more isolated – and because it is public property, the police will be unable to shoo away the homeless who will set up a hobo city against its walls.

[JoeSixPack1]

Looks like he (Daniel Liebskind) cares way too much about exotic geometric structural design, name recognition, non-conformity to surroundings and showmanship,

then he does about retail space, longevity and structural integrity.

But regardless of the committee, if whack job Bloomburg has anything to say about it,
it will be the most outlandish eyesore the world has ever known.

[GOP_Proud]

HERE IS WHAT lIEBSKIND'S BUILDINGS REALLY LOOK LIKE!


Oh...my...God...Please...don't...let...them...select...this.

[GOP_Proud]

HERE IS WHAT lIEBSKIND'S BUILDINGS REALLY LOOK LIKE!


Oh...my...God...Please...don't...let...them...select...that.

[AngryJawa]

UGLY DECONSTRUCTIVIST CRAP!!!

What makes architects (and owners)like these think that garbage like that should be forced on ANY city, let alone this hallowed site? Wait, I know. Like "artists", they've abandoned truth and beauty for shock value. Remember the crucifix in the jar of urine? Art? No, it's nothing but an immature "intellectual" getting his jollies by riling up the public. There's no difference between that and Decon architecture no matter how much florid jargon the architect uses to land the comission.

History will not be kind to this foolishness.

[Petronski]

Liebskind will surely be chief designer in hell.

This is wildly ugly and unsettling.