Category: visual

The proposed design by Daniel Libeskind for the World Trade Center site has been chosen. “The new building is planned to be taller than the trade center towers, which briefly stood as the world’s tallest at 1,350 feet. Libeskind’s tower also would surpass Malaysia’s 1,483-foot Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest buildings in the world.”

“The Libeskind design was considered the front-runner for weeks, although a rival plan by an architecture team called Think, which featured two soaring latticework towers called the World Cultural Center, collected strong support as the decision neared. Ultimately, however, rebuilding officials voted in favor of Mr. Libeskind’s somber treatment of the memorial and the incorporation of an active street life in the commercial portions of the site.”

“The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art plans to cut its exhibitions by as much as 25 percent in the wake of an expected $1 million budget deficit for 2003 and stock market losses that have left its endowment fund $13.9 million in the red. SFMOMA, which has built an international reputation in the past decade, will gradually reduce its exhibits from about 25 per year to perhaps 18 to bring its spending in line with the shrinking economy and the realities of the museum business.”

Let it never be said that the two finalists in the Ground Zero sweepstakes were content to sit back and let others decide the fate of their designs. Both Daniel Libeskind and Rafael Viñoly have been working overtime in an effort to make their respective proposals attractive to New York’s political and artistic bigwigs. “With talk of truth and beauty, memory and monument, these architects have been selling themselves like movie stars… Not since Gary Cooper appeared in The Fountainhead has the public been so riveted by architecture and architects.”

Like many critics, Christopher Hawthorne was impressed with the emotional punch of Daniel Libeskind’s plans for the World Trade Center site. But like some others, he’s cooled to the idea with time. “What’s really happened is that the passing of time has offered the chance to imagine how the various schemes first unveiled months ago might strike us in 2013 or 2053, rather than 2003. And in that test, Libeskind’s doesn’t fare so well. The ruling above-ground gesture of Libeskind’s plan, seen especially in the towers that would ring the site, is that of the shard, the sharp fragment unleashed by shattering or explosion. Combined with the idea of keeping the pit as open as a fresh wound, the shards seem to aestheticize the violence of Sept. 11. And the further we get from that day, the more misguided it seems to fix the site’s violent history in glass and steel.”

“The new Canadian War Museum appears to be headed for tens of millions of dollars in cost overruns, partly the result of unexpected water problems at the LeBreton Flats work site, but also due to a fast-paced construction schedule aimed at completing the building while many of the veterans it honours are still alive.”

Beijing is investing $854 million in building and renovating museums in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. “By 2008, Beijing will have 130 museums,” said a government official.

“An art thief left behind part of his finger after cutting it off while stealing a $65,000 Frances Hodgkins painting from an Auckland gallery yesterday in what is being called a theft to order. It was the second time in a week and a half that Ferner Galleries in Parnell have been the target of burglars.”

“We might think of design as a marriage of form and function. Yet the ratios often shift to produce the absurdity of, say, a Philippe Starck lemon squeezer – great styling, but the juice goes everywhere. Design has a job to do, and now more than ever. We are learning to integrate it into our lives with a greater sophistication and understanding. And the more the consumer responds to the product, the better designed it becomes.”