“After months of bitter disagreement, the master planner and lead architect for the World Trade Center site yesterday unveiled the design of an iconic new tower that will rise 1,776 feet above Ground Zero to become the world’s tallest building… The structure would be torqued in shape, giving it an asymmetrical look. And though its grand spire would pierce the sky, the building would house 2.6 million square feet of office space only up to the 60th floor… At the 66th floor, a public observation deck will be built. And at the 67th, the famed Windows on the World restaurant will return when the building is completed in early 2009.”
Tag: 12.20.03
Seeting Aside Ego For The Sake of Art
With all the public feuding between architects Daniel Libeskind and David Childs, the public had good reason to fear that the eventual design of New York’s newest skyscraper would turn out to be a monument to ego and greed. Instead, says Herbert Muschamp, maturity seems to have prevailed, and New Yorkers ought to be thankful that it did. “The architects have come close to transcending what’s left of their battered selves. With some shrewd editing, the design could become one of the noblest skyscrapers ever realized in New York.”
Now, About That “World’s Tallest” Thing…
New Yorkers are fond of leading the world in one thing or another. So it’s no surprise that the new Freedom Tower is being pumped as ‘the world’s tallest building.’ But is it, really? “It will certainly be the world’s tallest cable-framed, open-air, windmill-filled, spire-studded superstructure, rising atop 70 stories of offices, restaurants, a broadcast center and an observation deck,” says David Dunlap, but uninhabitable spires such as the one that will stretch some 625 feet above the tower’s occupied space may not count towards the ‘world’s tallest’ designation. The final decision on such things is left to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which we swear we are not making up.
On Writing Words For Opera
Poet Lavinia Greenlaw recently found herself writing an opera libretto. “Singing is not a casual act. Opera (again, like poetry) works best when it refuses to be embarrassed about its artifice. Libretti work best when the lines are fluent and convincing, but also emphatically styled. As I have begun to learn in my own libretto-writing, it’s a question of texture rather than vocabulary. Rossini once said: “Give me a laundry list, and I will set it.” WH Auden points out that this is not so great a claim, since lists lend themselves to music particularly well. Any words can be used if they contain a space for the music and action and are strong enough to change shape without losing meaning. It’s like making the skin for some fantastical beast based on what it is going to do rather than what it might look like.”
What The Barnes Can Teach Ontario
The Art Gallery of Ontario is expanding, and simultaneously undergoing a bit of an inner identity crisis, with the recent controversial closing of its Canadian wing, and the announcement that it will begin to integrate such decorative arts as pistols and fountain pens into its collection. “Through the history of museums… idiosyncratic tastes have driven great institutions forward — and hobbled smaller ones in perpetuity.” For a sense of what paths the AGO may wish to explore, and which ones it may need to avoid, Kate Taylor suggests a fresh look at the various melodramas surrounding Philadelphia’s embattled Barnes Collection.
Change of Ownership, But No Change of Plans
Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art is in the final planning stages for its new home on the South Boston Waterfront, but everyone involved had to pause this week, when it was announced that the family which owns the land on which the new ICA will sit intended to sell the plot, after deciding not to develop it. ICA officials are saying that the sale should not affect their plans, since any new owner would be required to abide by the terms of ICA’s lease with the current ownership. Still, a new developer could choose to build whatever it wished on the non-ICA portion of the land, and observers are wincing at the possibility of a grand new museum surrounded by parking lots.
WTC Tower – It Has To Be Better Than This!
The Libeskind/Childs tower for the World Trade Center site is old-school thinking tied to hidebound out-of-date ideas, writes James Russell. “American Class A buildings are no longer regarded as high-standard buildings in London, Germany, Scandinavia, Holland, Japan—not even in supposedly backward China. What’s today’s high-standard tower? One of the most ambitious is Swiss Re, coming to completion in London by Foster & Partners. (You can find it by searching under “projects” in the architect’s site.) It features gardens for idea sharing and for blurring the boundaries between floors, an advanced approach to daylight and ventilation, and a floor configuration that offers almost everyone access to windows or views.”