Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 17:13:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Epstein
Subject: WTC Rebuilding #222:Bloomberg vs. Hornings,West Street Hearing,
    Libeskind Article

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A lot of this email is contributed by list members...
John Dellaportas of Save West Street let us know about
a hearing TOMORROW (the mailing address for written
comments is probably more practical at this late date)
on the West Street Tunnel effort,and Marilyn Gaull Howard
found an article from the British Observer site about
Libeskind (I edited out the offer to sell tickets to a
lecture Libeskind is giving in London).(I have had
articles from the New York Observer (observer.com) before,
the one below is from www.observer.co.uk (part of the
Guardian Group).

First off,though,I want to point to another sign of conflict
between those against tall towers...the outspoken Hornings
are wailing about Bloomberg disagreeing with them about
bringing ashes to the WTC site.
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/1507.htm

I understand there is in fact a law against any more
burials of remains in Manhattan south of Chambers Street.

This is a case of abrasive and opinionated people rubbing up
against each other...I don't know who will prove more unpopular.
But we need to build support for the things we believe in,
as more important than either Bloomberg's "Vision" of an altered
Downtown or the Hornings' desire to see the site defined by the
deeds of their son's killers.

Over at NYCS,Agustin Ramos is pushing the same lawsuit as
"Don Francisco" as he did as "Ariel Ben Artzi"...my caveats
remain as to there being no law against making stupid decisions.
Overturning those decisions needs to be done outside a courtroom,
I think.

Three replacement board members have been named to the
development corporation...Christy Ferer (the Port Authority
Executive Director's widow) in place of a former Port
Authority chairman,a black executive(publisher of Essence)
in place of a black executive(CEO of Merrill Lynch),and
a banker in place of a lawyer.

Planning for our June 28th rally is proceeding...BE THERE...
but the city is apparently trying to hit us with an increased
cleanup bond.(We've cleaned up fine in the past and the posted
money has been reclaimed).

Now,as to the below...
the West Street tunnel/deckover would cost a billion dollars
better put into the Towers being made taller(seeing as Silverstein
doesn't want to spend on that cause,which MUST be achieved).Wide
pedestrian bridges (possibly with a streetcar line,an idea I have
toyed with) would enable crossings just fine without covering over
four blocks of a road that really isn't that much harder to cross
than 34th Street.It's a good idea to tell the DOT that this is not
a priority item the way proper development of the site itself is.
The locals concerned about crossing the 16 acres if the pit is
retained are NOT concerned with trouble crossing West Street.

As to the article on Libeskind,
it tells us more about him,though from a perspective that is not
pro-tall-towers and forgets to mention the discrediting of the
"Wedge of Light" myth.

We can certainly do better than his offerings when it comes to a
response to the mass murders that reaffirms what they sought to
destroy...and we must fight to make sure that we do.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 01:31:38 EDT
From: SaveWestStreet@aol.com
Subject: upcoming DOT hearing


Louis:

I have some information that may be of interest to some of your members.  As
you may know, the State DOT is planning to proceed with Governor Pataki's
scheme for a one billion dollar "short" tunnel for the four block stretch of
West Street adjoining the WTC site, despite community opposition  The main
justification for it is to maintain a "suitable setting" for the planned memorial.
This Tuesday, the DOT is planning to have its one and only public hearing on
the subject, and will be accepting public comment for 6 hours.  Many of your
members have been vocal, eloquent opponents of the proposed tunnel, and I would
be most grateful if you would let them know of this hearing.  Plus, I'll owe
you one.

Here's the info, according to CB1:

The NYS Dept. of Transportation  will be taking comments from the public on
West Street options.

Date:    Tuesday, 6/24 from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Place:   US Customs House, One Bowling Green.

Written comments can be mailed to:
Richard Schmalz,
State Dept. of Transportation
21 South End Ave.
New York, NY 10280

Thanks.

John Dellaportas
Chair, Coalition to Save West Street

---------- End forwarded message ----------

Observer/Guardian article
-------


Ground hero
His controversial design for the rebuilding of the 16-acre World Trade
Center site has been slated as a 'wailing wall' and a terrorist target.
But winning over his critics is the least of his worries, architect
Daniel Libeskind tells Dominic Lutyens
Dominic Lutyens
Saturday June 21 2003
The Guardian


Daniel Libeskind's New York office is remarkably modest considering it is
from here that he's masterminding the world's most challenging
architectural scheme - the $10bn-plus reconstruction of the 16-acre World
Trade Center site, which is located only a five-minute walk away. His
studio is a makeshift space equipped with around 15 village-fête-style
trestle tables groaning with plans and models of Libeskind's most
ambitious project to date.

But then Daniel Libeskind, who sailed into New York in 1959, a Jewish
immigrant accompanied by his Holocaust-surviving parents, and who has
since lived in London, Milan and Berlin, is clearly used to transience.
A life of survival and adaptability has rendered the trappings of an
elegant office a cosmetic irrelevance. Libeskind, who talks in
rapid-fire, staccato sentences, mentions unapologetically at one point:
'We're in temporary offices. We don't have wallpaper. Just a wonderful
spirit.' Of his loyal team, which includes his diminutive but formidable
Canadian wife Nina, he says: 'People are here because they believe in
what they're doing. It's not about how impressive your desk is or the
accoutrements on the walls.'

With no reception, and an intimidating atmosphere of intense
concentration and industry, this is no place to walk into as a stranger
trammelled by British reserve. The only way for me to puncture this
bubble is to propel myself into the space with a forthright introduction.
We're in New York, after all, city of Teflon-coated self-belief and
chutzpah - qualities Libeskind possesses in spadefuls. He has stood by
his consistently controversial projects with unwavering conviction.

The centrepiece of his Ground Zero scheme is the monumental Freedom
Tower. Other elements include a Memorial Museum, a sunken Memorial Garden
removed from street-level bustle and so conducive to contemplation, two
cultural centres, retail outlets and a railway station that promises to
be Lower Manhattan's answer to Grand Central Station, and which will
provide a link from New York to JFK Airport. Most contentious of all is
Libeskind's desire to retain part of the 70ft-deep, 552ft long
bathtub-like structure (otherwise known as the 'slurry wall') in the
bowels of the site that prevents water seeping in from the Hudson River -
symbolically, an emblem of resistance to terrorism and a powerful
reminder of September 11.

The competition for the scheme was speedily conducted in two stages. Last
December, seven architectural practices submitted nine schemes in round
one. By February, these had been whittled down to two - Libeskind's and a
design by Think, a practice headed up by Rafael Vinoly, which envisioned
two translucent, ethereal towers made from scaffolding filled with
cultural spaces. Libeskind's scheme was given the green light on 27
February. This despite the acid-bath vitriol heaped on it.

Rival architect Vinoly described Libeskind's design as 'the Wailing
Wall'. In a tit-for-tat spat, Libeskind dubbed his opponent's scheme 'two
skeletons in the sky', and deemed its name, World Cultural Center, a
sinister throwback to Stalin's 'palaces of culture'. The New York Times's
architecture critic, Herbert Muschamp, has called its retention of the
slurry wall 'astonishingly tasteless, emotionally manipulative and close
to nostalgia and kitsch'. Libeskind maintained Muschamp had become
Think's unofficial campaigner, and one of his team emailed fellow
architects urging them to write to the paper to 'get rid of this guy'.
The email was leaked, making the vendetta public.

Meanwhile, a recent survey revealed that the majority of New Yorkers
wanted the Memorial Garden to be at ground level (so it can be crossed
more easily) and thought that the height of the proposed tower was a red
rag to terrorist attacks. There have also been countless political
wrangles over how the project will finally look, and it still stands the
risk of being compromised by powerful parties holding a stake in the
site. Larry Silverstein, who owns the lease on the site and has the legal
right to rebuild on it, is a hard-nosed voice of Mammon: he has pushed
for it to be filled by a giant shopping complex to replace the Twin
Towers' mall, formerly America's most profitable retail space. He is also
opposed to the slurry wall, arguing that it is unsightly and would deter
commercial tenants. He has talked, ominously, of wanting Libeskind to
'inspire, not design' the site's buildings in collaboration with one of
four architectural firms he has approached (including Foster and Partners).

But Libeskind cheerfully deflects such challenges by rationalising that
controversy is a vital ingredient of democracy. 'Discussion is part of
the civic process. If people don't discuss a building, they don't care
about it. Architects have to be ethical, really mean what they're doing,
and take the risk of that path. It's not the path of least resistance.'
This rational argument, however, is undoubtedly bolstered by unshakeable
self-belief: 'You have to believe 100 per cent in what you're doing, you
can't be victim to the whims of fashion.'

Libeskind's reputation was established by his first project, Berlin's
Jewish Museum, commissioned in 1989 and completed 10 years later. Then
came Osnabruck's Felix Nussbaum Museum, which houses the paintings of
Nussbaum, an artist who died in Auschwitz; the Imperial War Museum North
in Manchester, and his proposed Spiral extension for the Victoria &
Albert Museum.

Libeskind's theatrical, formally innovative architecture is a
continuation of a tradition of sculptural architecture, epitomised by the
Sydney Opera House, and revived and expanded by Frank Gehry, of Bilbao
Guggenheim fame. Steeped in narrative and metaphor, it marks a major
departure from the hi-tech, steel-and-glass edifices of Lords Rogers and
Foster. But while Gehry's buildings are characterised by softly billowing
curves, Libeskind's geometrically complex architecture is, less
sympathetically, jarringly angular.

Spiral is almost too serene, too calmly symmetrical a form to describe
the twisting, lurching vortex of sharp-cornered planes of the planned V&A
extension. Aesthetically, it recalls the jagged, fragmented abstract art
of the Italian Futurists, Russia's Suprematists and Constructivists, and
Vorticist Wyndham Lewis. The Spiral has echoes in Constructivist Vladimir
Tatlin's Monument to the Third International, a leaning, spiral tower
(the model for a building to house the Third International Communist
Congress in Moscow, in 1921, which was never constructed).

Matching these forms in their dizzying complexity is Libeskind's taste
for highly wrought, often bafflingly Byzantine symbolism. The Freedom
Tower's height, which measures 1,776ft, is an allusion to the 1776 War of
Independence. Set to be the world's tallest structure, its tapering form
is an abstracted, stylised homage to the Statue of Liberty's
torch-bearing arm. A proposed Heroes Walk will trace the firefighters'
paths as they raced into the Twin Towers, while its Wedge of Light - a
triangular piazza the shape of which is defined by the angles of the
sun between 8.46am, the moment the first plane hit the first tower, and
10.28am, when the second tower collapsed - is designed to ensure no
shadow falls on the site between those times, every September 11.

At the heart of his labyrinthine, zigzagging, zinc-clad Jewish Museum in
Berlin - part celebration of Jewishness, part Holocaust memorial - is a
void chillingly symbolising the absence of Jews in the city. More
frustratingly abstruse is the museum's Garden of Exile with its 48
columns signifying the birth of Israel in 1948. Similarly obscure is the
way the angles and plays of light and shadow in the museum all point,
with meticulous geographical accuracy, to the homes of hundreds of
Berlin's lost Jewish families. Another conceit underpins the Spiral: if
laid end to end, its planes would measure the length of Exhibition Road
(500m), where part of the V&A stands.

But Libeskind contests that he is obsessed with cryptic symbolism. He
shrugs off any suggestion that the impact of his buildings is diminished
if you can't decode their more esoteric symbols. 'It's not important,' he
insists. 'Architecture is about creating a multi-layered fabric of the
city. The city has many stories. You can walk into a space in many
different ways and pick up on many different narratives. It's not about
prescribed things you should know about. People discover things on their
own, discover architecture on more than one level.'

His desire to create an open-ended, multivalent architecture is inversely
proportional to his revulsion for crudely reductive buildings: 'The
reduction of culture in architecture has been an ongoing issue in
totalitarian architecture, its reduction to some easy slogan like
"people's architecture".' This personal bugbear is deeply rooted in
autobiography, in the painful experiences of his parents and their effect
on him. And it sheds considerable light on his architecture which,
cerebral conceits aside, is highly emotional and more subjective than he
perhaps cares to admit.

Libeskind was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1946, to parents who had survived
by escaping to the Soviet Union, where they were promptly interned in
camps in Siberia. Released, and reunited in 1943, Libeskind's parents
returned to Warsaw, which, rife with anti-Semitism, was a hostile
environment to live in. But the family's fortunes improved dramatically
when, from an early age, Libeskind displayed a remarkable talent for the
accordion. In 1957, aged 11, Libeskind and his family emigrated to
Israel, then to the Bronx, New York, where his mother worked as a
seamstress, his father in a printworks. In Israel, Libeskind performed
with Daniel Barenboim, then in America played professionally in such
venues as Carnegie Hall.

But while his all-consuming passion was music, the intellectually curious
Libeskind hated the humdrum life of a performer and began cultivating
additional interests. First mathematics, then architecture. 'It was an
organic process,' he says. 'I didn't wake up one day and say: I want do
to X. In any case, I'd always loved architecture.'

He studied at New York's Cooper Union, graduating in 1970, then did a
postgraduate degree in the history and theory of architecture, in
Britain, at Essex University, having by now married Nina, whom he'd met
at a summer camp for the children of Holocaust survivors - and who,
incidentally, is Naomi 'No Logo' Klein's aunt.

In the 70s, Libeskind developed a highly personal, unorthodox
architectural language, expressed via a series of complex abstract
drawings and collages bristling with erudite references
to art, architecture, literature and science. To this day, his work is
informed by the ideas of chiefly Jewish intellectuals - Kafka, Einstein
and Arnold Schoenberg, to name a few. One set of drawings, Micromegas
(1979), depicted wildly eddying geometric forms reminiscent of the
canvases of Kasimir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky. Another laboured
under the ponderous title Chamberworks: Architectural Meditations of the
Themes of Heraclitus (1983), yet the drawings fizzed with energy and
brio. Typically in a slim, horizontal format recalling a musical score,
they teemed with fast-flowing currents of oscillating waves and lightning
bolts. The drawings were an exploration of his belief that music and
architecture are intimately linked, which he still holds today.

Asked if making the transition from music, a relatively intangible
medium, to the physicality of architecture was difficult, he says, 'Music
and architecture are very connected. Technique plays an incredibly
important role in both. You couldn't do architecture or music if you
didn't learn how to move your fingers.' Then, typically, after making the
case for technique, Libeskind's thoughts segue seamlessly into his
intellectual views of architecture as culturally enriching. 'But
technique is only good if it's a means to an end. I guess what I'm trying
to say is that technique has to dissolve itself and allow you to see
something beyond it.'

I ask Libeskind if his work has an affinity with Rachel Whiteread's art,
which he says he 'loves' - on the grounds that both have created highly
controversial Holocaust memorials. (Whiteread's is in Vienna.) But he
disagrees, pointing out that, unlike art, architecture has a duty to be
serviceable. 'It's something to be lived in, not looked at. Buildings are
something to be used in a very pedestrian way - even museums. They have
toilets, staircases, windows, elevators, air-conditioning systems.'

Despite apparently valuing functionality as much as ideas, for years
Libeskind's predilection for non-representational architectural drawings,
coupled with his reputation as a heavyweight academic (he lectured
regularly at Yale and Harvard and the Architectural Association), led
many to assume he was more interested in theorising than in building. And
with justification: he didn't build anything for the first two decades of
his career.

Until, that is, his discovery in July 1989 that he'd won a blind
competition to design Berlin's new Jewish Museum. The relentlessly
peripatetic Libeskind - who was about to move from Italy to Los Angeles
to take up a prestigious Getty scholarship - was caught on the hop. But
faced with the choice between sticking with his plans or moving with Nina
and their children Lev, now 25, Noam, 23, and Rachel, 14, to Berlin, he
agreed to the commission. When the museum opened to widespread acclaim,
he was propelled into the spotlight as a sought-after international
architect. It was recently reported, however, that many Berliners had
expected a German to win the commission, and that when it went to a
Jewish Polish-American, they sent him hate mail, and he was blacklisted
from hundreds of design competitions for the city's redevelopment. He and
Nina subsequently refused to speak German in public. Yet this isn't the
emphasis he now places on these events: 'Berliners weren't unhappy - they
were surprised.'

If there was even a nagging doubt that they were hostile towards him, did
it at any point put him off the project? 'No. Working there gave me an
interesting insight into Berlin,' he says. It's tempting to speculate
that designing the Jewish Museum and working in Berlin enabled him to
confront and exorcise personal demons. Could this have been a major
reason for him having undertaken the project? Libeskind responds by
saying: 'I don't think you can separate the personal from the political.

I bring my experiences in very conscious ways to all the projects I've
done. My work isn't immune to deeper things. I don't agree with the idea
that architects remove themselves out of the operation, that they're
universal voices.' He substantiates this further, quoting from a
philosopher he admires: 'The observer, said Werner Heisenberg, is not neutral.'

Certainly, just as Libeskind's mind effortlessly zaps back and forth
between concrete references and abstract conceptualising, he is as
populist as he is highbrow. No ivory-tower egghead, shortly before it was
announced that he'd won the Ground Zero competition, he appeared on the
Oprah Winfrey Show. Not above frivolity, he has given interviews to the
New York Times about his weakness for cowboy boots and designer glasses.
He also played the man-of-the-people card when he appeared on CNN and
gave a sentimental speech about his arrival in New York and his first,
unforgettable impression of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan
skyline - which won the hearts of New Yorkers.

Scholarly allusions aside, his highly emotional, site-specific
architecture is rooted in democratic principles, in grass-roots research,
in wishing to involve any affected parties. To get truly under the skin
of the World Trade Center scheme, he met relatives of those who died on
September 11 and firefighters, and attended as many of their meetings to
discuss their thoughts about the site's redevelopment as possible. He
also swears by gut instinct. At the start of each project, he strives to
divine the 'voice of the site'. He did so at Ground Zero - currently a
crater swarming with workers building a temporary terminal for the Path
train link that will connect New York and New Jersey - by touching the
site's 'slurry wall'. At present, the ring-fenced area is remarkable only
for its colossal scale. On one side is a poignant, if modest, black
plaque listing the names of those who died.

It's a key hallmark of Libeskind's work that he paradoxically juxtaposes
light with darkness, transcendent hope with gritty reminders of tragedy,
the acme of which is the Ground Zero scheme, with its light-filled tower
and giant scar at its base. 'It's important to embrace the reality of the
terrorist act, not bury it. You can't say nothing happened there. That
day changed the world, changed America. When you think of what happened,
you realise this memorial space is an important space. It can't just be a
park with Frisbees being thrown about in it.'

Libeskind has toed the patriotic line, not only with his CNN speech, but
by recently wearing a Stars and Stripes pin in his label and constantly
affirming his love for America and New York in particular, for 'the
people, the conversations you can have here, the speed of it, for being
the gateway to America'. Has the outcome of the Iraq war complicated his
views of the US? 'No, the time when I was growing up had its issues - the
Cold War, nuclear shelter drills, Vietnam.' Patriotism, he insists, isn't
inherently right-wing - surprisingly, perhaps, given that extreme
nationalism helped fuel Nazism. 'I never thought anyone should
appropriate the true images and symbols of America for one group's
consumption as the right wing has done. Patriotism belongs to everyone -
Jews in the Bronx, Puerto Ricans, African-Americans...'

Despite his CNN speech, Libeskind denies he ever felt entitled to win the
Ground Zero project because he was an immigrant. 'Not at all. I simply
approached it from the point of view of being a citizen of the world and
of New York.'

Of course, the genteel denizens of Kensington were less than thrilled at
the prospect of the futuristic V&A Spiral, although it now has the
blessing of culture secretary Tessa Jowell. Provided the remaining funds
can be raised to cover the scheme's £75m cost, construction should start
in 2004. For Libeskind, the Spiral isn't inconsistent with the V&A's
original ethos or its architecture and interiors, given it was designed
by progressive figures, such as William Morris, who conceived it as an
inspiring, educational space.

Widely perceived to have specialised in building monuments and memorials
(including also San Francisco's Jewish Museum), Libeskind has been
cruelly nicknamed by young architects as 'Death Camp Danny'. Does he feel
he's pigeonholed himself? 'That's a misrepresentation. That's how
I started - with the Jewish Museum in Berlin - but I've also built a
media centre in Hong Kong, Europe's biggest shopping mall in Berne, and a
department store in Dresden.'

Libeskind has often stated that architecture is 'optimistic'. Does he
mean it is optimistic or that it should be? And, by extension, does he
believe in progress? 'It has to be optimistic,' he says. 'It has to
celebrate life. Like Kafka said, I believe in progress because it hasn't
happened. If you didn't believe that you could change things for the
better, you wouldn't struggle.'

This romantic, life-affirming philosophy doesn't quite take into account
the reactionary, life-denying architecture of Albert Speer. 'When it's
the mouthpiece of a totalitarian system, it's no longer architecture, is
his answer to that. And his thesis appears to omit the market-driven,
'price-per-square-foot' mentality of some developers. But for Libeskind,
good architecture accommodates polarities. It must face reality by
acknowledging harrowing truths about the past and make room for symbols
intimating a better future. 'Architecture has to give a new horizon to
view, a freedom. The only way it can do this is to be rich with meaning,
but rooted in life. It's not an easy thing.'


Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.