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NY1 reports that the WTC Memorial, Reflecting Absence, has been tested by a fountain consultant. The consultant constructed a "full-scale mock-up of some fountain configurations" to look for "potential problems with freezing and winter conditions"; the design has two pools in the footprints of the old World Trade Center Towers, with waterfalls around them. Outgoing Lower Manhattan Development Corportation President Kevin Rampe says that memorial groundbreaking is still "on track" for 2006, even in spite of the Ground Zero issues. You can learn more about Reflecting Absence at the LMDC.
The various parties involved with developing the World Trade Center - NY State, NYC, the LMDC, Larry Silverstein, victims' families, other politicians, you name it - are getting ready to roll up their sleeves and hash things out (again!) about what get built. At the end of a Daily News article, there's a list of 20 questions-and-answers about what's happening at Ground Zero: "6. Who's to blame for all this? No one is casting stones - at least not publicly. But the NYPD has said it has been raising security concerns for 16 months. It wasn't until an April 8 NYPD letter that the issue took on a new urgency."
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is taking the time to tell the NY Post that Governor Pataki or whomever is leading the WTC rebuilding should simply rebuild the old Twin Towers, but maybe just make them a story higher.
"They should duplicate the World Trade Center and not build something that looks like an empty skeleton...The design for the Freedom Tower is an egghead design, designed by an egghead, which has no practical application and which, frankly, didn't look very good. I've gotten great reviews on my buildings. I'm somebody who believes strongly in great architecture and this [the Freedom Tower] was a design that is just not a good design."Trump is referring to Daniel Libeskind, whose spokesman told the Post, "I suppose Trump wants to add an extra floor to make room for his name. That's probably not the kind of iconic symbol anyone had in mind for this site." Thanks, Trump, for not being very helpful. But is it sick to want to have a reality show of the WTC rebuilding? At least that way, we could see what was going on?
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TRUMP IS AN ASS
Trump has a point. This Freedom tower has turned NYC to a joke.
The current concept is absolutely hideous.
It is huge, unwieldly and no longer a Libeskind concept. Scrap the whole thing and start the competion over, or give the design to the runner up- not Silverstiens personal architect.
Why, exactly, should anyone be interested in Donald Trump's aesthetic opinions?
I liked the Libeskind design, though it wasn't my first choice. If there are new constraints that will make it impractical, for god's sake, let's go back to the drawing board instead of compromising it to death.
I'm not sure which fact undermines Trump's credibility more, his role of aesthete vis-a-vis that dead beaver he calls a hair-do(n't), or his role as financier, the week before his casino business is set to emerge from bankruptcy. I guess the house can lose, when the cards are trump.
re-build the original towers but better, safer.
i feel a void that could never be filled by that hideous freedom tower.
the skyline as it was is how it must be, as it is in my dreams.
it was gloriously absurd and accurately reflected america!
let it be, again!
i dont live in new york, but here spent lots of time there over the past couple of years. Even I feel a hole in the heart of wtc. here here to the comment made by the chap above
is there any question that trump's buildings have to be some of the most uninspired and tacky architecture nyc has had to endure? only the post would consider his opinion relevant.
NY architecture will alway be predetermined to be
TACKY
as long as there are the under-handed means to water down good design through committee/political infighting.
Give the design back to THINK!!!
(there is a tale going around my architecture office that has been going around that Libskind's Lawyer knew Pataki- because THINKS was orginally mentioned briefly as the winner at first)
Hopefully the true design darlings:
Calatrava
Renzo Piano
Polshek
Zaha Hadid
Foster
......won't have their concepts compromised.