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CounterPunch
September
9, 2002
Losing Ground
Zero
Twist &
Shout
by Gavin Keeney
The New York
Times Takes on Ground Zero
The next (newest) wave of proposals for Ground
Zero (the World Trade Center site and immediate environs) is
upon us, courtesy of His Majesty Herbert Muschamp and The
New York Times. This round of dreams was sponsored by The
Times, at Muschamp's bidding, to counter the deplorable and
all-but universally panned proposals released in July 2002 by
the LMDC (Lower Manhattan Development Corporation) in league
with the Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey. The Port
Authority, the "owner" of the so-called ground beneath
Ground Zero, has recently been subject to a well-meaning attempt
by the City to reclaim that imaginary ground by trading the stewardship
of the site for the ground beneath LaGuardia and JFK airports.
This plan, which seems to be going nowhere, requires the approval
of both the governor of New Jersey and the governor of New York.
Fascinated (and appalled) by this circus, New Yorkers should
not be blamed if they begin to develop both an enlightened cynicism
and a lust for toppling the arrogant stewards of City- and State-owned
land. The latest batch of visions for Ground Zero from The
Times is unlikely to prevent this much needed disregard for
putative authority, civil or otherwise, given the same lack of
nuance and sensitivity mars The New York Times's version
of Ground Zero as it did the LMDC's.
Herbert Muschamp, one of the worst architecture critics on the
planet, has effectively rounded up his favorite architects and
"commissioned" a series of studies which will be added
to the pile of proposals and studies already generated by ad
hoc groups of various stripes claiming to represent New Yorkers,
plus those of the LMDC. As the world watches  the danse macabre, it is useful to point
out that the City-and-its-image is on the line as much, or more
so, as is the reputation and image of America around the world
as George W. Bush rips the last vestiges of the Bill of Rights
and bilateralism in "foreign affairs" to shreds. Muschamp
and the venerable Times should have known better than
to foist another proprietary vision upon the public. Never one
to indulge in faux populism, Muschamp can be credited neither
with rising to the occasion nor sinking to the pits of self-indulgence.
The former is well nigh impossible and the latter is his metier
-- and, anyway, both are beneath him.
The latest proposals, presumably paid for by The Times,
appeared in The New York Times Magazine and online on
September 8. No doubt they will please the architectural community
insofar as they are all about architecture and have nothing to
do with the City as a social and ethical complex (quagmire).
Where's
the Ground?
What is striking about the interminable wide-ranging visions
proposed since last January is that there is (and remains) no
ground at Ground Zero. What is meant to picture a new unfolding
of architecture and urban landscape (a.k.a. landscape urbanism)
lacks all the necessary cues of closely articulated space. The
lead article, penned by Muschamp, introducing the latest scheme
-- and he claims that all of these various images are integrated
-- ignores the fact that the pro forma architectural package
lacks all sense of rootedness and, more critically, unitary spatial
dynamism. Twisted, deformed, imploded, and transparent forms
dominate an otherwise prosaic and predictable assemblage of iconic
buildings floating in the proverbial urban ether. Peter Eisenman's
imploded building forms strewn along West Street, Rafael Vignoly's
ribbon-esque underground transit center, and Guy Nordenson's
contorted 100-or-so-storey twin towers are all in themselves
haunting forms. Such formal exercises are often compelling, in
isolation, but that is not what the site (nor anyone quite thinking
about New York City's hoped for renaissance) requires. The Muschamp
apologia attached to the release of the high-octane architectural
diagrams and rudimentary scenographic sketches claim "there
wasn't time" to deal with parks, streets, and open spaces
beyond what fall immediately within the purview (shadow) of each
designer's signature building. This issue of "signature
building" is in itself highly telling, given that Muschamp
claims to abhor the normative practices of present-day urban
planning. His usual critical position is one-dimensional insofar
as he has rarely, if ever, developed an interest in the ambient
or urbanistic nature of the modern metropolis. His professed
love of the crystal canyon north of Grand Central Terminal on
Park Avenue is typical fare. His frequent ode to the Seagram
Building (by Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson looking over
his shoulder) is apropos his lack of interest in the urban complex.
A roster of name architects was summoned to work collectively
and in a brief, stormy set of orchestrated charrettes, toward
the hoped for resplendent, definitive re-definition of Lower
Manhattan. Why this was not the result is a very serious question
(and problem). The mere fact that the team of architects was
cobbled together by a self-professed connoisseur of avant-gardism
is part of the problem. That he really isn't quite avant-garde
at all is another matter. The attendent fact that this is The
New York Times, after all, would incline one to the conclusion
that the operation was undermined by elitism and a very special
form of liberal parochialism. This last set of compromising traits
is possibly responsible for the former, versus vice versa.
Muschamp rounded up a claque of the "very best" established
architects, a token artist (Maya Lin, more artist than architect),
plus a few well-chosen (well-connected) architectural workmen
(stable but predictable fellows) and let rip with his
program. This program, which intentionally mirrored the LMDC-Port
Authority program, is less than meets the eye. It may include
all the commercial office and retail specifications that the
LMDC's unfortunate architects had to deal with, but it also carries
an awful lot of Muschamp's personal baggage. His anima toward
authentic ground is one such problem. In all of the sensational
graphic depictions of a Muschamp-inspired Lower Manhattan there
is literally no ground beneath our feet. As compensation we are
expected to applaud a melange of sensuous, formal gestures groping
-- as it were -- in the direction of "our" (Muschamp's)
pent-up desire for something extraordinary and/or exhilarating.
If it cannot be extraordinary, in Muschamp's universe, it should
at least be titillating.
There is really only one solution left for this on-going miasma
of self-indulgence, faux-populism, and blinking-stupid opportunism.
There MUST BE a bona fide design competition, open to all, and
free of the bureaucratic and plutocratic hegemony of the usual
suspects. This MUST is a categorical imperative of the gravest
type. Without an authentic call for proposals and an open process,
one that New Yorkers should be able to vote for through a special
referendum, there is LITTLE hope. The LMDC should be forced to
comply, the Port Authority should stand down, and Herbert Muschamp
should be banned from commenting on Ground Zero until he has
updated his aesthetic, rhetorical, formal, and ethical precepts.
Otherwise, plans will be piled upon plans, the sorry hole in
the heart and soul of New York City will deepen, and cynicism
will sprout its usual black flowers of spiritless abjection and
anomie.
Gavin Keeney is a landscape architect in New York and
writes on the subject of landscape + architecture + other things,
a cultural amalgam always-already forthcoming. He is author of
On
the Nature of Things (Birkhauser, 2000). He can be reached
at: ateliermp@netscape.net
POSTSCRIPT (DEFAULT
SCHEME #1)
All plans, visions, proposals, schemes,
ideas, concepts, intentions, surmises, hunches, impositions,
and suggestions for the site will be shredded, and composted
in situ (used for temporary fill). All future re-development
schemes will require that all players throw half-a-million dollars
each into the hole, i.e., before they are allowed to add their
shredded documents. Disgraced politicians, bureaucrats, land
speculators, and architects past their sell-by-dates will be
dumped into the hole as well. On the one-hundredth anniversary
of 9/11 (in 2101), the site will be flooded with sea-water by
carving a huge channel through Battery Park City and the Real
will be permitted to colonize the abyss.
OUTTAKES
THE
UN-COMPETITION
The LMDC is decidedly not calling the
new Request for Qualifications a "competition", but
a "study". This relieves them of any responsibility
to the designers beyond paying them the meagre 40K (200K total).
There is also no formal jury. New York New Visions and the LMDC
will select some "advisors" to help premiate 10 or
so teams, and an LMDC committee will make the final cut. Finalist
schemes will be added to the stock pot of competing ideas, including
BBB's $3 million master plan. The RFQ also does not include
a memorial, but a provision for a future memorial. A second
"competition" will be offered up at a later date for
this integral portion of the complex. WTC
Design Un-Competition Announced (The New York Times,
08/15/02)
TWISTED
AESTHETICS
"If you don't like the images, check
out the concepts. You might dislike them too. But at least you'll
gain a sense of architecture as an art of connecting dots. In
this study, meaning is derived less from individual projects
than from the relationships between them." New
York Times Unveils WTC Proposals (The New York Times
Magazine, 09/08/02)
CINEMATIC
ANALOG
"There is a nouvelle vague resemblance
here to Le Mépris (a.k.a. Contempt), Jean-Luc
Godard's 1963 film about a loving relationship gone awry. The
beautiful Camille (wife), played by Brigitte Bardot, is the City
of New York. The novelist cum screenwriter (husband), played
by Michel Piccoli, is the LMDC. 'Do you like my feet? ... My
ankles? ... My thighs? ... My breasts?' 'Yes! ... Yes! ... Indeed!
... Yes!' The husband, however, eager to ink an important contract
pushes his wife into the arms of the oily American film producer
Jeremy Prokosh, played by Jack Palance. In our version of this
'car wreck', the 'oily producer' is the Usual Suspects. ('When
I hear the word culture, I reach for my checkbook.') The
producer is filming Homer's Odyssey but wants to re-write
the script to incorporate an inferred wantonness on the part
of the hero, hence his dawdling instead of returning to Ithaca,
and his wife Penelope, after the Trojan war. The director (Fritz
Lang) resists. The writer/husband goes along because he wants
the money, until -- voila! -- his wife leaves him in disgust.
To the director everything after Homer is a loss of innocence.
He quotes Holderlin, Dante ... It all, of course, ends in tragedy."
Grave
New Urbanism (Archive - Grotto)
THINKING
THE COMPLEX (TANGENT #1)
New
York City Shortlisted for 2012 Summer Olympics (The
New York Times, 08/28/02)
THINKING
THE COMPLEX (TANGENT #2)
Art After 9/11
(The Guardian Unlimited, 08/28/02)
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William McDougal
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Riad Z. Abdelkarim and Jason Erb
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September
7 / 8, 2002
Bill Christison
A
Year Later: It's Happening Here
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Tenth Crusade
Susan Davis
Mr. Ashcroft's
Neighborhood
Bruce Jackson
When
War Came Home
David Krieger
Looking
Back on September 11
Mike Leon
Bush and War
Peter Linebaugh
Levellers
and 9/11
William McDougal
September 11 One Year On:
That's Entertainment!
Riad Z. Abdelkarim and Jason
Erb
How American Muslims Really Responded
to 9/11
Jeffrey St.
Clair
The Trouble
with Normal
Tom Stephens
Rise Up...Dump Bush
September
6, 2002
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Stolen
Trust
Gale Norton, Indians and the Case of the Missing $10 Billion
September
5, 2002
Ben Tripp
Jesus vs.
George the Second
William Hughes
McKinney's
Defeat:
Undue Meddling
Gavin Keeney
Beaux
Reves, Citoyens!
Wayne Saunders
War
Begins; Nobody Notices
Irit Katriel
Drunk
with Power:
Israeli Chief of Staff Calls Palestinians a "Cancerous Demographic
Threat"
Gary Leupp
Who's Afraid
of Iraq?
September
3, 2002
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Robert Fisk
A Forgotten
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Uri Avnery
The Return
of the Dinosaurs
September
2, 2002
Francis Boyle
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Lou Cohan
Confessions
of a Downloader
Philip Farruggio
Labor
Day Antidote to Apathy
William Blum
Cuban Political
Prisoners
in the US
September
1, 2002
Dave Marsh
No Surrender:
Springsteen's The Rising
August 31,
2002
Gavin Keeney
Return to the
Charterhouse of Parma
David Vest
Porkland:
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Ralph Nader
The Highway
Lobby
M. Shahid
Alam
CNN Reporting
(poem)
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Subjugation Strategy
Dr. Susan
Block
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life
of Catherine M.
Kurt Nimmo
Clueless
at the State Dept.
August 30,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Hitchens, Kissinger, Springsteen, Haggard & Elvis
August 29,
2002
Chris Floyd
The Secret
Sharers:
The CIA and the Murder of Frank Olson
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Days That
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By
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