All Over the Map. Michael Sorkin
has revolved around the appropriateness of a “cemetery” on the site, the lack of human remains compromises the usefulness of the model. Equally, the analogy of a battlefield seems inappropriate to the site of a mass murder of civilians, although this too is one of the widely used analogies informing the debate. Because of the difficulty in establishing agreement about the basic character of the event itself, vocal constituencies call for the memorial to be widely dispersed, while others suggest the restoration of commercial activity—including continuing demands for the reconstruction of the Twin Towers.
The city has not yet found a way to decide among these claims. Clearly, the ethical and philosophical dimensions of this question are far beyond the intellectual ken of the businessmen and bureaucrats who dominate the LMDC and Port Authority, the bodies empowered to decide on the future of the site. These agencies have further contributed to the difficulty by promulgating plans in which a “memorial” is treated as ancillary to the larger development, and not its driver. This distinction is fundamental, and is one that must undergird the serious debate that has yet to take place in the corridors of official power.
Still, the recent parsing by the Port Authority of the reach of the footprints helps define their aura in terms of space and use. After all, the question isn’t simply one of how close normal life should be permitted to come, but also of what activities are to be considered respectful. Just as one bridles at the thought of a casino on Omaha Beach or a McDonald’s at Gettysburg—and just as tremendous protest greeted the opening of a disco outside the gates of Auschwitz—so it should be clear that some things should not come too close to Ground Zero, wherever we decide to locate it.
In a real estate economy in which value (and meaning) is measured in inches, the care with which we discuss these questions will have tremendous bearing on the meaning of this place for future generations and on its role in the wider physical pattern of New York City. The question is whether a compromise between contending interests—finance, transportation, memorial—can yield a vision for the place. The conflict is not simply between a terribly banal politics—a little something for everyone—and a democratic process in which all voices are heard and weighed to abet a larger idea of the common good. Such matters of a collectively formed memory are not the subject for compromise but the terrain for a more spiritual consensus.
Every memorial invents the event it recalls. That “event” of 9/11 cannot simply be absorbed into things as they are: a year later it still exceeds our ability to describe it. It is only what happens now—what we do about this event and how we mark it—that will define the meaning of this horrific act. Until the endlessly “realistic” language of current discussion can be changed to accommodate this perspective, the victims of this terrible crime will not have been served.
2002
11
The World Peace Dome
Perhaps there was no avoiding it, given the pressure. And there was a certain logic to the restoration of the skyline, to patching the gaping hole. But given the growing certainty that building was going to be the “solution,” we speculated about a form other than that of a tower or towers. We wanted to resist both the triumphalist phallomorphology of a bigger, higher, “better” version of the Trade Towers and to find a form that spoke to issues of harmony and peace, while still assuming some prominence on the skyline.
A dome seemed at once legible, evocative, and different. As a place for people to gather at all times of the year, it satisfied what seemed the most important activity the site should embrace—peaceable assembly. Marking and commemoration could take place with the reconstruction of the footprints and the planting of lush, year-round gardens, and people could flow across the site from every adjoining street. The big dome would serve as an enclosure for the transit center that would inevitably become part of any project. Finally, we placed a series of crescent-shaped towers within the dome to house other uses we thought important: a panoply of cultural institutions and a home for people and organizations working for world peace, perhaps the UN or a center for NGOs. Although the form of these structures was not strictly predictive of the style of their occupation, it did seem very important to assert that all uses were not equivalent and that reconstruction of the site had to be predicated on choosing the most appropriate ones.
2002
12
The Lotus
As we continued to look at the possibilities for the building on the site, we became more intrigued with the formal possibilities of the towers designed for the interior of the World Peace Dome.
Our next move was to remove the huge enclosure and let the tendrils grow and loosen formally, unconstrained by the formerly spherical space but still informed by it. The metaphor of a flower unfolding hovered over the project as we worked through this second iteration. Initial drawings show the buildings as a kind of Fata Morgana, unattached wisps mingling with more rooted structures. Looking back, there seems to be something both floral and flame-like in these forms that reflect both memory and ambivalence. More importantly, the paring away of the dome and the ephemerality of the sketches recall my earliest feelings about the future of the site, that it should be left untouched for a good length of time before any decision is taken about reconstruction.
Nevertheless, we pressed on to test the architectural viability of the scheme. The site organization worked well enough, and the towers were viable. There was plenty of room for the inclusion of cultural institutions below grade and within the wide bases of the towers. Aware of a private development proposal for a tower on the site of the proposed MTA transportation center on Broadway, we designed a covered galleria over Dey Street as a grand transport concourse, connecting the collection of lines converging beneath Ground Zero to those concentrated further east. The plan also included the rebuilding of the block to the south of Dey Street and the inclusion of a major cultural space—perhaps the City Opera—within it.
2002
13
Security
A recent ad for a Homeland Security Summit and Exposition bore the headline, “Grab Center Stage In a $138 Billion Market.” Clearly, paranoia is a growth industry and the proliferation of conferences and meetings to discuss its implications is staggering. Since September 11, the nation has been consumed with its “war on terror” and the lens of fear refracts more and more of the meaning of everyday life. From bomb detectors at the airport to the rise in ethnic profiling to the visa difficulties of the students we admit from abroad to the Pentagon’s sinister data-mining project run by Admiral John Poindexter (of Iran-Contra fame) to the new tics in our private behaviors, the culture is suffused with incitements to anxiety as the media fixates on the imminence of terror.
My own private internalization of this fear strikes me from time to time on my walk home from my studio, which takes me past a large federal building that houses, among other offices, the passport agency. As I approach this block, I often find myself thinking about car bombs. After particularly anxious days at work, I sometimes imagine I have spotted the lethal vehicle (generally some nondescript minivan) set to explode. I have walked blocks out of my way to circumnavigate the building and the impending fatal blast.
We measure the environment against our perception of its perils. Whether skirting dark streets at night, mapping and avoiding “dangerous” neighborhoods, or staying out of tall buildings, the human geography of the city entails assessments of convenience, pleasure, and risks. Our problem nowadays is that we are creating an urbanism predicated primarily on risk avoidance—one likely, in its more extreme versions, to have a terrible effect on fundamental ideas of the good city. To the degree that we acquiesce, we become complicit in a cycle of exacerbated paranoia, creating a bunker mentality.
There are both material and immaterial bunkers. The material variety—already abundant—includes the proliferation of biometric checkpoints, credentials vettings, hardened construction, defensive bollards, ditches around “high-value” targets, and so on. The immaterial fortifications are more