New York architects/urban planners Craig Whitaker and Rafael Viñoly, FAIA, and New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger, Hon. AIA, joined Architectural Record Editor in Chief Robert A. Ivy, FAIA, to discuss the ongoing development of the World Trade Center site November 1 at the Library of Congress in the nation's capital. Sponsored by the library's newly created Center for Architecture, Design, and Engineering, in association with Architectural Record and the American Architectural Foundation, the panelists spoke in the relaxed forum about what Ivy called the "extreme volume of design intent that has been unleashed since September 11."

While noting that some design and master planning efforts, such as those of the volunteer-based New York New Visions coalition, have been done quietly, Ivy pointed to a number of initiatives, some of them private, that have tried to "jump start a process that seems clouded in confusion." He mentioned how New York City gallery owner Max Protetch (in conjunction with Architectural Record) launched a large-scale effort that asked architects and artists to draw up design schemes for the ravaged site and noted that magazines, newspapers, and television stations—including the New York Times, New York magazine, and Goldberger's New Yorker—have now accumulated enormous databanks of design ideas.

Ivy also pointed to the volume of design as a manifestation of the positive human energy that was embedded in the towers when they fell. "It is as if human intelligence can somehow knit back together what had been torn apart. Not only the physical fabric of Manhattan . . . but also New York's place in the world and the psychology of optimism that surrounded that particular place and the city itself."

Ivy said private individuals and journalists began to ask, "Is the power of the idea strong enough to take us somewhere we have not gone before?" He sees evidence of the public at large turning to design for answers. "We have looked for answers and we have been extremely comforted to weave back together the fabric we had lost, or to change it, and come up with something new—to go beyond this violation to some new fabric, and to ask the question, 'Can we find wholeness?'"

Real politick
Six exceptional design teams, selected after a new call for qualifications was issued last summer, will submit new plans to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) at the end of November. The panelists (including Viñoly, who is a member of one of the chosen teams) say that it is unclear what will happen after the teams submit their plans. The LMDC and the Port Authority have made no commitment and are under no obligation to incorporate any or even parts of the works into the actual building site.

Goldberger said critical design and programmatic issues remain unresolved. Part of the confusion, he said, lies in the morass of entities with legal or moral authority over the site, which ranges from discrete units such as the Port Authority and the governors of New York and New Jersey to more amorphous groups such as the families of the victims, the survivors, the residents in the surrounding neighborhoods, all New Yorkers, and basically, the world at large.

"There has never been a parcel of urban land anywhere in this country, if not the world," Goldberger said, "that has become so much an object of passion, and intensity, and concern." He called the interest a blessing and a curse. "A blessing because if you believe in architecture in cities it's obviously better to have people care about what will happen. On the other hand, a curse because there is no way there can be an efficient or rapid process. On the other hand, of course," Goldberger mused, "when has democracy ever been efficient?"

Leadership void
Both Whitaker, who is the author of Architecture and the American Dream, and Goldberger worried about the lack of public-sector leadership that has left the process wanting for a clear and inspired vision. Instead, they said, the vision has come from private individuals, especially architects who were "filling a power vacuum left by the failure of public officials to call for vision and lead the process." Furthermore, Goldberger said, the public was "far, far ahead of the public officials" when it unanimously decried the original, more stringently created plans. Specifically, Whitaker said, there should be someone in the upper echelons of power who is savvy about design and has the authority to make planning decisions. He also worried that some serious public policy issues will be decided with no public participation.

The panel also agreed that the memorial on the site should not be pursued as a separate venture with its own design competition next year. As it stands now, the six groups are to set aside memorial space, preferably the towers' footprint. Viñoly agreed with Goldberger, who said the decision does not allow for "some kind of conceptual leap that would integrate a memorial with the totality of the site." Instead, the designers are being asked to master plan a process, leaving a set of acres empty in the middle.

Cautious optimism
Viñoly, stressing that he was only speaking for himself, gave some credit to the LMDC. The truth is that the public response never would have occurred had the LMDC not convened the public meeting and subjected themselves, "probably with too much wishful thinking" to the harsh response that turned down the initial plans, he said.

There is indeed reason for optimism, Goldberger concluded. "A few good things have happened besides the overwhelming level of quality of the six teams. . . . There is now a certainty that there will be some kind of train station, some kind of central transit node on the site, there will be airport access, there will be efforts made to tie Lower Manhattan to the rest of the region beyond what exists now. There will be some version of depressing West Street, the highway next to the site, and there is a general sense in Lower Manhattan being approached more as a totality than just Ground Zero as an isolated site."

—Tracy Ostroff

Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.