At a private talk earlier this week, I heard an executive who had led one of the public agencies that’s rebuilding the World Trade Center site praise the “non-monumentality” of the current plans. He spoke proudly of his own role in changing the tenor of the project from one of high-design fervor, inspired by architect Daniel Libeskind’s original site plan, to a more pragmatic one, which is chiefly concerned with completing construction. He listed some key decisions that the city had made with his guidance that tempered artistic ambition and made it possible to move things forward, including fast-tracking construction of the National 9/11 Memorial and simplifying the design of Santiago Calatrava’s new transit station by adding columns inside the main hall.
He was a persuasive, intelligent man, but as he spoke my insides churned. We can’t afford to be sentimental about rebuilding at this site, and we don’t need to build the world’s tallest building here to show them, but can’t we try to do something great? This is an important site at the heart of the city’s historical and financial districts that’s giving us the opportunity to build a new neighborhood all at once. Oftentimes, and especially in architecture, what we want to be great ends up going all wrong. But why are we starting out by doing something that’s deliberately less than great? Libeskind’s vision for the site would have been complex to execute, but it had been selected by both city leaders and the general public. One of Calatrava’s signature soaring, rib-cage structures might not be appropriate for this site, but why did the city commission one from him and then lampoon it by sticking columns inside? I remember the rogue scheme Donald Trump presented to the press, shortly after Libeskind’s plan had been chosen, to rebuild both original towers one story higher. As I sat listening to this other, powerful city player praise non-monumentality, the Donald’s outsized ambitions for the site site seemed perfectly sane.