Nicolai Ouroussof, the architecture critic for the New York Times, spares little in his criticism of the official Freedom Tower design. The Freedom Tower will be built on the site of the WTC in New York City. You can tell how much Ouroussof likes the design by the title of his commentary: Fear in a soaring tower.
Somber, oppressive and clumsily conceived, the project is a monument to a society that has turned its back on any notion of cultural openness. It is exactly the kind of nightmare that government officials repeatedly asserted would never happen here: an impregnable tower braced against the outside world.
And he hasn’t even gotten to the Nazi comparison yet….
Apparently, Ouroussof cares little for Godwin’s law as well:
But if this is a potentially fascinating work of architecture, it is, sadly, fascinating in the way that Albert Speer’s architectural nightmares were fascinating – as expressions of the values of a particular time and era. The Freedom Tower embodies, in its way, a world shaped by fear.
Albert Speer, in case you didn’t know, was Hitler’s architect.
Ouroussof continues, with a criticism that extends beyond the building itself:
What the tower evokes, by comparison, are ancient obelisks, blown up to a preposterous scale and clad in heavy sheaths of reinforced glass – an ideal symbol for an empire enthralled with its own power, and unaware that it is fading.
Watch Ouroussof become the next target of the right wing noise machine, if they can pronounce his name. Soon, he will be the next reason that the Iraq war isn’t going so well, with all his empire talk and Nazi analogies.
I became very suspicious when I saw the artists renderings yesterday at the NY Times website, and of six drawings, only one allowed you to see the bottom of the building, and that only from a shot as if hovering over the building at a slight angle.
The text of the story discussed the bottom 200 feet of the building forming a “near-impregnable concrete cube.” How sad. If that is what we have to do to rebuild the tower and meet current security guidelines, better to not rebuild it at all. What a stain to the memory of those who died; what a testimony of a nation’s innocence lost. Such fortifications cry out “dark age,” which will be the testimony of history if our nation doesn’t soon reverse course.
This is ominous and frightening in more ways than one. It also reminds me of the kinds of architecture used in dystopian science fiction by the upper classes, to isolate themselves from the teeming, miserable, poverty-stricken masses. That’s not fortified against terrorist attacks. That’s fortified against the people of the city.
I remember how appalled I was over 20 years ago when I first visited the state Capitol complex in Albany (Empire State Plaza). I hadn’t yet studied architecture in a formal setting, but one certainly didn’t need that background to feel how oppressively dehumanizing the buildings are (other than the Capitol itself, which is well over 100 years old). They almost seem to have been designed to accentuate the distance between government workers who occupy the towers and the citizens on whose behalf they supposedly work.
Here are a couple of good photos: one tower and the four agency buildings together.
Then again, it’s probably also wise to keep in mind that 30+ years ago, reaction to the original twin towers was very similar to what’s being said about the Freedom Tower redesign right now.
The part that really got me was this:
Designed to withstand a major bomb blast, the base will be virtually windowless. In an effort to animate its exterior facades, the architects have said they intend to decorate them in a grid of shimmering metal panels. A few narrow slots will be cut into the concrete to allow slivers of natural light into the lobby.
The effort fails on almost every level.
This is us in America today: blinded by “animated exterior facades” and fed on “slivers of natural light”…
for our towering fear in the face of difficulty. That is exactly how we responded to 9/11. We allowed fear to get the better of us. Now we have the dead and wounded of mind and body to tend to from two countries.
We as a generation must end the use of war as a means to solving human problems.
The title of the appraisal, and the quotes given above, come not from The New York Times itself, but rather its international offshoot, the International Herald Tribune. What the Times has, in both the paper and online, is called “A Tower of Impregnability, the Sort Politicians Love”.
And it’s notable that the last sentence quoted above is clipped by the NYT: the words “and unaware that it is fading” are absent from the American version.
Ah, the distinctions that are made for different audiences . . .