WTC Memorial - by Michael Arad (Architect) and Peter Walker (Landscape)

[Cityslob]

The Memorial that is being rammed down our throats is wrong, and should have been eliminated from the Memorial competition a long time ago.
It broke many rules of the competition, and it's original design even failed to address the tomb for the unidentified remains, which is now an empty symbolic vessel, that no one understands.
The LMDC knew that the memorial had feasibility problems, and now after multiple refinements, the design still fails on many fronts.
The LMDC states that the design's encroachment of the towers footprints are inevitable, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation says otherwise.
Pataki vowed to people of this city and all those affected by September Eleventh that he would not build on the footprints.
Meanwhile the LMDC seems hell-bent on pouring concrete over everything, and forgetting about that day as soon as possible.
If reflecting absence is built, visitors to the site will stand between the footprints at street level, and still not know where the memorial is located.
Maya Lin forced this design on the other competition jury members with her stomping fits and tirades of anger, and e-mails and phone calls at all hours, till they have had enough.
We have witnessed the LMDC's and Maya Lin's observance to the rules and requirements for the memorial by her "Passion" vote to make the famed "Twin Piers" design a finalist. That design was almost entirely located outside the entire WTC site. The fact that that design was even viewed by the jury stands as a stark testimony to the LMDC's caring about the rules and requirements for the memorial, for they have used the memorial Mission Statement and Program as toilet paper almost immediately after they drafted it.
What is abundantly clear, is that the LMDC and it's affiliates are the ONLY ones who like the memorial. But don't take my word for it, go ask the firemen, or the cops, or the EMS works, or the construction workers, least not the volunteers who stood shoulder to shoulder with all city employees, filling buckets with body parts.
Ask anyone and everyone who has no financial stake in seeing this design go forward, and they will tell you, it stinks.
Having to reduce the size of the footprints to two-thirds, of their original size at street level, is by far the most absurd, ridiculous, appalling slap in the face the LMDC could possibly exact on the great people of this city.
And the people from around the world, continue to witness American politics and greed at Ground Zero, at it's worst.

[BigMac]

AM New York
March 13, 2006

Construction begins at WTC

BY JUSTIN ROCKET SILVERMAN
STAFF WRITER



Without shovels in the ground or political ceremony, construction began today on the World Trade Center memorial while Sept. 11 families headed to court to fight plans to build over the twin towers' historic footprints.

Trucks rolled down a ramp into the site with lumber and other equipment at about 8 a.m. About 10 construction workers arrived to begin cleaning the memorial area of debris, checking the towers' footprints for damage and installing protective wooden coverings over parts of the original foundation.

After six to eight weeks of preliminary work, concrete will be poured to create footings to support the "Reflecting Absence" design.

"This memorial fails because it destroys the authentic remnants of the Twin Towers' footprints," said Anthony Gardner, executive director of the World Trade Center United Family Group. "It's our position they are working unlawfully, that historic preservation laws are being violated here by working without these issues being resolved."

Gardner, whose brother was killed on 9/11, said his group has filed an injunction to halt construction on the memorial.

He said the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is under so much political pressure to begin work at the site that it is proceeding with what he calls "faulty plans."

Current plans for the $330 million memorial and $160 million underground museum would entail the removal of steel perimeter columns that made up the original Twin Towers. Protesters say that without the columns, it will be impossible for future visitors to grasp the full dimensions of the destroyed buildings.

The LMDC issued a statement saying that plans for the memorial would not be derailed by protesters or their attempt to secure an injunction.

"We plan to proceed on schedule with building a memorial that both pays tribute to those we lost and honors historic preservation principles," the statement reads.

Initial work on the memorial that begins Monday will be limited to site preparation and debris removal. In two or three months, workers are expected to begin installing the actual structure of the memorial.

"The LMDC is consumed with getting this memorial done rather than getting it done right," Gardner said. "If they need to start showing some tangible signs of progress at Ground Zero, why aren't they building the Freedom Tower? The groundbreaking for Freedom Tower was a whole year ago."

Mayor Bloomberg was asked about the impending memorial protests Monday at the Throgs Neck St. Patrick's Day Parade in the Bronx.

"We went through an open process where everybody had a chance to participate," he said of the memorial design. "I'm sure everybody that's seen the design likes some things about it and doesn't like others. But we have to make a decision. That decision was made. Now we have to go and build it."

Copyright 2006 AM New York

[lofter1]

Why is anyone surprised that Pataki lied? When has he not??

[americasroof]

Why are all those people using those cell phones at Ground Zero? And. Is this the crowd shots we can expect when officially projected 25 million people visit "America's most popular" memorial?



If you think I'm a malcontent take a look at Curbed's gentle humor on this momentous day.
http://gutter.curbed.com/archives/20...e_railings.php

And for good measure the full resolution photos (I'm sure a photoshop guru will improve the expeirence here) is at:
http://www.buildthememorial.org/site..._pressreleases
It's better to go to this URL since it's a moving URL.

[americasroof]

While I think that a billion-dollar memorial is ridiculous

So, BPC are you going to invest in this "brilliant" concept? It's just a check box away on your April New York State tax return!

[ablarc]

This is one depressing scene.

Borderline morbid.

A nation of wound-lickers?

[BPC]

So, BPC are you going to invest in this "brilliant" concept? It's just a check box away on your April New York State tax return!

Nope, I think Arad's design sucks. A lack of funding can only improve the design, by forcing the WTC memorial committee to remove some of the more maudlin elements -- waterfalls, slurry wall, etc. I have been directing my donations instead to the restoration of my church, St. Nicholas, also destroyed on 9/11, and to the construction of a rehab center for wounded vets, which Zippy provided the link for a few pages ago on this thread.

[Strattonport]

I was there today around this afternoon , but I didn't see any of the families protesting. I did see that woman with those yellow posters, though.

[lofter1]

I have been directing my donations instead to the restoration of my church, St. Nicholas, also destroyed on 9/11

I read somewhere that there was a competition for the rebuilding of St. Nicholas ...

Any info on that?

[BPC]

Nope, the whole process is being handled with the utter lack of transparency typical of the way the Greek Church conducts its business.

[americasroof]

JUST STAY AWAY
By STEVE CUOZZO
March 13, 2006 -- THE BEST THING GOV. PATAKI CAN DO FOR GROUND ZERO

NOW that Gov. Pataki is on the mend after his medical crisis, there is one thing he can do to help things along at belea guered Ground Zero: Recuse himself from any further involvement in rebuilding the World Trade Center site. He, more than anyone, is to blame for the wretched shambles it is.

Temporary anarchy will be better for Ground Zero than nine more months of the governor's ruinous reign. Nothing could be worse than the national disgrace over which Pataki has presided.

Nobody said rebuilding would be easy. But neither did anyone imagine that, 41/2 years after 9/11, the site would still be an empty pit (save for a temporary PATH station), with its planned signature elements either inadequately funded and/or at risk of being scuttled.

Pataki's failure is Homeric in scale. He has reduced the reclamation of "hallowed ground" to a joke on a level with the Second Avenue Subway. The paralysis can only be explained by a heart that was never really in the job, or gross incompetence - or both.

BACK in spring 2002, with the site cleared more swiftly than anyone had dreamed possible, hopes ran high for rebirth. Pataki had many resources to work with, especially his Empire State Development Corp. and effective control of the bi-state Port Authority, owner of the land.

Leaseholder Larry Silverstein was eager to rebuild; the Port Authority, too, had an emotional commitment to creating something new on its land.

But today - four years later - work has yet to start on the site's major elements. The Freedom Tower is so unpopular that elected officials, bureaucrats and Silverstein himself are quietly scrambling for a way out. And the Memorial Foundation hasn't raised a dime since last November.

Meanwhile, the noisy public debate over Silverstein's future at Ground Zero fuels uncertainty about the whole project, scaring large companies off Downtown.

It's easy but wrong to blame Ground Zero's quagmire on Silverstein and/or the Port Authority. Yes, the developer is cantankerous and bottom-line oriented, while the PA's imperious bureaucracy tends to do as it pleases. But Silverstein swiftly built a striking new 7 World Trade Center on PA land just outside the crater. And the PA is moving steadily ahead on its Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH terminal.

No, the rebuilding fiascos are mainly the result of Pataki's decisions or his notoriously disengaged management style.

How disengaged? glance at the macabre, blackened hulk of Fiterman Hall on the front doorstep of new 7 WTC. The building is owned by CUNY, whose board is controlled by the governor - and the eyesore will surely be standing on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Are you awake, George?

NEITHER Silverstein nor the PA could move a shovel in side Ground Zero until Pataki signed off on a master site plan. After that moment of hope in early 2002, he shunned his Empire State Development Corp. to set up a weak-spined Lower Manhattan Development Corp. Then he let the LMDC dither with "visionary" site-plan schemes by world architects - a process that yielded designs ridiculously unsuited to Lower Manhattan.

Next, in February 2003, Pataki disastrously chose the Daniel Libeskind master plan, overruling LMDC's (and most everyone's) preference for a different scheme. That choice spawned most of today's problems. For example, Libeskind placed the Freedom Tower at the very worst spot in all of Ground Zero for an ultra-tall office building - its problematic northwest corner.

The ground near the western slurry wall is unstable, and underground train lines further complicate the job for both Silverstein and the PA. Plus, the spot is too far from the commercial corridor of Church Street on the site's eastern end. These challenges have tied landlord and leaseholder in knots since the outset.

So why did Libeskind put it there? Just because he wanted the tower to have an off-center antenna that would "echo" the Statue of Liberty torch. For that feeble parallel to have any resonance, the building had to be on the side nearer to the Hudson River.

PATAKI compounded the damage by alternately issu ing edicts, and then running for cover once their consequences became clear. Libeskind's LMDC contract called for him only to devise a site plan - not to design buildings. Yet Pataki forced Silverstein's Freedom Tower architect, the accomplished David Childs, to "collaborate" with Libeskind - a museum architect who had never worked on an office building, much less one of the world's tallest.

As 2002 was squandered on Pataki's site-plan follies, much of 2003 was blown on this architectural "partnership," which became an embarrassing public spectacle. When Childs finally won the upper hand, Pataki bizarrely forced him to graft Libeskind's off-center antenna onto the top.

The hybrid structure needed 2,000 feet of height to safely incorporate all its elements, but Libeskind insisted it be exactly 1,776 feet tall. So Pataki chopped the tower down.

By mid-2004, insiders were whispering that the mongrelized tower couldn't work. The antenna would tear the roof off, for one thing. Admitting that publicly, however, would have humiliated the governor at the Republican National Convention. So he staged the July 4th ceremonial cornerstone-laying.

While Silverstein's architects struggled to make the Pataki-edited tower buildable, the developer and the PA grappled over infrastructure dilemmas posed by the Pataki-dictated corner site. But last spring, as they were finally close to resolving the infrastructure issues, at least, the NYPD barged in - saying the tower's design and nearness to West Street left it too vulnerable to truck bombs.

That prompted Pataki to send the tower back to the drawing board. Yet the NYPD warning came 14 months after all parties, city and state included, had signed off on the scheme. The cops said they'd tried to raise the warning earlier but couldn't get their calls returned. The timing seemed highly suspect, though, in view of Mayor Bloomberg's long and public opposition to new office buildings Downtown.

But where was Pataki? Either the security alert was a fraud that was his job to expose - or the NYPD's concerns were legit, and it was his job to have known that from the outset. Whatever the truth, it seems likely Pataki used the NYPD report as a face-saving way out of a project that his own meddling had made unbuildable.

Bottom line: The project had wasted yet another year, with Pataki again to thank.

THE need to move and rede sign the tower practically overnight resulted in a bulky, prosaic building with no resemblance to the original sleek, poetic spire. And the thrice-delayed, diminished project is back under siege today, with the air full of calls to cancel the groundbreaking, most recently from the Times.

Now the PA, egged on by the mayor, is in talks with Silverstein aimed at ousting him from a role in building towers 3 and 4. Pataki set a deadline of tomorrow.

Both sides want those two sites because they're the best spots to build at Ground Zero - next to the Church Street commercial corridor, close to the commuter-friendly new PATH station.

But why were the best sites reserved for towers that, under Pataki's timeline, won't be built until after both the Freedom Tower and another Church Street tower are finished? Once again, because that's where Libeskind put them.

LIBESKIND and Pataki made a different sort of mess of the memorial ground. It is both too big - nearly half of Ground Zero's 16 acres - and too small, thanks to Pataki's rules that inevitably forced its main public viewing spaces underground. Chief among them was Pataki's requirement not to build upon the 1-acre tower footprints, while yet requiring that they be "made visible."

The limitations would have challenged Michelangelo. But no Michelangelo stepped up for the LMDC's wacky selection procedure - anonymous submissions from anyone with paper and pen, evaluated by a panel of "experts" mostly concerned to assert their independence from the bureaucrats.

The "winner" - by obscure city housing-project architect Michael Arad - was so bleak that it needed major doctoring. But fancy landscaping has added little to its appeal.

The public has voted with its pocketbook - by snapping it shut. The Memorial Foundation is $200 million short of its $500 million goal; of the $300 million "raised" so far, $200 million came from a federal allotment funneled through the LMDC, and much of the rest from two Downtown companies desperate to see the hole filled. (And Bloomberg warns that the full cost will be more like $1 billion.)

The fundraisers blame public resistance on the ugly spat last year over fears of anti-American art at the International Freedom Center and Drawing Center, which were to be in the memorial quadrant. If so, whose fault is it?

Again, only Pataki's - he and his LMDC made the centers part of the project in June 2004, some 15 long months before he finally booted them last September. What was Pataki doing all that time? Enjoying, apparently, another deep snooze.

NOW, with the clock ticking on his term, the governor owes it to all of us to go back to sleep until Jan. 1, 2007 on any matters relating to Ground Zero. This time, we promise not to wake him.

scuozzo@nypost.com
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/op...ists/60904.htm

[americasroof]

At 8:24 a.m., work began & family protesters followed

Emotional day at wtc site

BY PAUL D. COLFORD
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Family members of those lost on 9/11 protest plans for memorial as work starts to prepare site.
The scoop of a rolling yellow excavator was lowered at 8:24 a.m. in Ground Zero yesterday to remove the first stones atop the north tower's concrete footprint.

With a scrape and a lift, construction of the World Trade Center Memorial was finally officially underway — and the battle with many 9/11 family members was joined.

"This day has been a long time coming," said John Whitehead, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., at a low-key news conference at the site later in the morning.

After years of planning and listening to suggestions, it was now time to build, he added.

No way, said the family members and others who are challenging the LMDC and Gov. Pataki on the design.

"Today is a very sad day for America," Anthony Gardner of the Coalition of 9/11 Families said at the group's own news conference and rally afterward, on Church St.

Gardner repeated the group's objections to a below-ground layout, stressing how it will likely limit access to the twin towers' footprints and steel column remnants.

He cited similar concerns raised by historic preservation organizations and, as reported Sunday in the Daily News, by Pataki's own State Historic Preservation Office.

A coalition lawsuit seeking to halt construction was set for a March 23 hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Though Pataki is recuperating from surgery, the absence of other elected officials at yesterday's press event in the pit of Ground Zero seemed to reflect the heat being generated by the memorial controversy.

Asked at City Hall about the disgruntled family members, Mayor Bloomberg said, "I just don't think it is possible when you have something that is so emotionally charged ... to ever come to an agreement where everybody's going to be happy."

He added, "But we had a process. ... That's what democracy is, and you have a right to say your piece and then, whatever we agree, it's time to get behind this plan and go and build the memorial."

For the next few weeks, a 13-member crew from Intricate Construction Co. will clear away the thick layer of stones and a lower rubber barrier that the Port Authority, which owns the site, laid in September to protect the footprints.

Meanwhile, on another battlefront, the Port Authority and developer Larry Silverstein had yet to agree on who will build what on the rest of the Trade Center site.

A 90-day deadline imposed by Pataki expires today.

Last week, Silverstein proposed giving up the Freedom Tower site and half his interest in one of two Church St. sites favored by the Port Authority. But the proposal hasn't gained much traction.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/loca...p-338514c.html

[lofter1]

OUCH ...

JUST STAY AWAY

THE BEST THING GOV. PATAKI CAN DO FOR GROUND ZERO

: SMACK : Gov. Pataki ... more than anyone, is to blame for the wretched shambles it is.

: SMACK : Nothing could be worse than the national disgrace over which Pataki has presided.

: SMACK : Pataki's failure is Homeric in scale. He has reduced the reclamation of "hallowed ground" to a joke on a level with the Second Avenue Subway.

: SMACK : ... the rebuilding fiascos are mainly the result of Pataki's decisions or his notoriously disengaged management style.

: SMACK : How disengaged? glance at the macabre, blackened hulk of Fiterman Hall ... controlled by the governor - and the eyesore will surely be standing on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Are you awake, George?

: SMACK : Pataki ... let the LMDC dither with "visionary" site-plan schemes by world architects

: SMACK : Pataki disastrously chose the Daniel Libeskind master plan, overruling LMDC's (and most everyone's) preference for a different scheme.

: SMACK : PATAKI compounded the damage by alternately issuing edicts, and then running for cover once their consequences became clear.

: SMACK : ... where was Pataki? ... it seems likely Pataki used the NYPD report as a face-saving way out of a project that his own meddling had made unbuildable.

: SMACK : Bottom line: The project had wasted yet another year, with Pataki again to thank.

: SMACK : ... whose fault is it? Again, only Pataki's

: SMACK : What was Pataki doing all that time? Enjoying, apparently, another deep snooze.

: SMACK : ... the governor owes it to all of us to go back to sleep until Jan. 1, 2007 on any matters relating to Ground Zero. This time, we promise not to wake him.

[davestanke]

There was a protest against building the Memorial at the WTC yesterday. I'm not good at estimating numbers, but there were as many (or more) press than protesters. Then tourists stopped by to watch the show. Of the whole crowd, tourists at times may have reached 50% of the total.

Between statements by Anthony Gardner and his lawyer, and elderly woman, started giving her own speach. I couldn't hear her clearly, but she was talking about just building a restaurant down there and getting things going. She didn't have a lot sympathy for the cause.

Anthony did the same old things. Showed pictures of the columns which still just don't awe me. Talked about the safety hazard without mentioning the 6 (or is it 8) emergency exits. Stated "for the record" that they never asked for a below ground memorial. On the other hand, they never objected to an underground memorial until late in the game, and yes, they did demand access to footprints at ground level. I guess they wanted access to the footprints, but they didn't want that to be part of the memorial.

And so it goes. Another media circus. Another dose of dogma.

[BigMac]

New York Times
March 14, 2006

And So the Work Begins. You Can Hear It.

By DAVID W. DUNLAP


A backhoe loader, left, was among the first pieces of equipment at ground zero Monday to start work on the memorial.

At seventy feet below street level, on the site from which the north tower once rose, a backhoe loader shoveled gravel and earth fill off a polyethylene membrane that was laid down six months ago to protect the remnants of the tower's perimeter columns and concrete foundation slab. The backhoe deposited the fill in a four-foot pile. A small skid-steer loader ferried the fill from there to a waiting dump truck.

About 100 feet away, close to the center of the tower's footprint, Gretchen Dykstra, the president and chief executive of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, was trying to narrate the event for several dozen reporters, photographers and camera crews who had been gathered in a pen made of bicycle-rack barricades.

"Today is a momentous day——" beep, beep, beep, beep, beep "—— began at 8 o'clock ——" rumble, roar "—— what you have are people ——" whine, grind, dump "—— they will check the condition of the slab." After three minutes of this, John F. Leeper, a vice president for Bovis Lend Lease, the construction managers of the project, strode across the site and briefly halted work. The speeches went on for only five more minutes.

Thomas S. Johnson stood in the pen among redevelopment officials. He is on the board of the foundation and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. One of his sons, Scott, 26, worked at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods and died on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Johnson rarely speaks publicly, but yesterday he said, "The people who sometimes express their anger do not represent the broadest number of the families who suffered."

Anger came an hour later, at another news conference, from Anthony Gardner of the Coalition of 9/11 Families. His brother, Harvey Joseph Gardner III, 35, worked for General Telecom and was killed in the attack.

The coalition is suing in State Supreme Court to halt construction of the memorial until alternatives are considered to the current design, which Mr. Gardner said would obliterate the scale and authenticity of the footprints by dividing them with new walls and columns. By starting construction, he said, state officials "have now officially dishonored the memory of the 9/11 dead."

As the dump truck, the loaders and the men from Intricate Construction Inc. continued working, the gulf at ground zero just seemed to grow.

a news conference yesterday to mark the beginning of construction on the World Trade Center memorial and memorial museum, you couldn't hear the conference for the construction.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company