NYT Critic: Post-9/11 Realities Warp a Soaring Memorial Design
When Santiago Calatrava unveiled his design for a luminous glass-and-steel transportation hub for ground zero in January 2004, government officials touted it as a 21st-century version of Grand Central Terminal — one of the few bright spots in a development plan crippled by politics, petty self-interests and the weight of the site’s history.
We should have known better. During the next several years the project’s cost spiraled to $3.2 billion from $2 billion. The scheduled completion date was delayed, first by a couple of years, then several more. Mr. Calatrava, determined to save his design, worked slavishly to get the budget under control. In a misguided effort to avoid more controversy, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey enveloped the project in secrecy, essentially shutting the public out of the design process.
But even for those of us who had given up on the idea that anything good would ever emerge from ground zero, the unveiling of an elaborate new model of the revised design on Saturday at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute was heart wrenching.
The model gives us the clearest picture yet of Mr. Calatrava’s vision. Dozens of minor improvements have been made; his structural pyrotechnics look as dazzling as ever.
Even so, Mr. Calatrava remains unable to overcome the project’s fatal flaw: the striking incongruity between the extravagance of the architecture and the limited purpose it serves. The result is a monument to the creative ego that celebrates Mr. Calatrava’s engineering prowess but little else. And it reinforces the likelihood that one day, decades from now, when the site is finally completed, it will stand as a testament to our inability to put self-interests aside in the face of one of America’s greatest tragedies....
Read entire article at NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF in the NYT
We should have known better. During the next several years the project’s cost spiraled to $3.2 billion from $2 billion. The scheduled completion date was delayed, first by a couple of years, then several more. Mr. Calatrava, determined to save his design, worked slavishly to get the budget under control. In a misguided effort to avoid more controversy, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey enveloped the project in secrecy, essentially shutting the public out of the design process.
But even for those of us who had given up on the idea that anything good would ever emerge from ground zero, the unveiling of an elaborate new model of the revised design on Saturday at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute was heart wrenching.
The model gives us the clearest picture yet of Mr. Calatrava’s vision. Dozens of minor improvements have been made; his structural pyrotechnics look as dazzling as ever.
Even so, Mr. Calatrava remains unable to overcome the project’s fatal flaw: the striking incongruity between the extravagance of the architecture and the limited purpose it serves. The result is a monument to the creative ego that celebrates Mr. Calatrava’s engineering prowess but little else. And it reinforces the likelihood that one day, decades from now, when the site is finally completed, it will stand as a testament to our inability to put self-interests aside in the face of one of America’s greatest tragedies....