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Have we forgotten how to dream?
By Susan S. Szenasy
Editor In Chief
November 2002
In the weeks before the first anniversary of 9/11, film crews
from all over the world were roaming the city, looking for human-interest
stories to send back home. Reporters from TV stations in Holland, Belgium,
England, and Asia arrived at Metropolis, setting up their lights
and cameras between the piles of papers and books in my office. The
first question they all asked, without fail, was "Where is the
vision for rebuilding?" This was in response to the six plans for the
World Trade Center site released, to widespread disgust, by the Lower Manhattan
Development Corporation (LMDC) this summer.
I wanted to tell them that the vision was about to be born, that it was
just taking a bit longer because we were still in mourning, numbed by the
emotional aftershocks of the towers' collapse. I wanted to say, "Just
watch us--brave and spunky and creative New Yorkers that we are--we will
have a grand vision to truly represent that shiny twenty-first century
city you're all expecting from us." But would this simply be wishful
thinking on my part?
The people in charge of rebuilding seem to be more comfortable with mediocrity
and with pleasing financiers than with searching for a vision. And
the people who are not in charge have all the ideas but none of the finances.
Will there ever come a time when it will be possible to bring the two together
for the benefit of our city?
Alexandros Washburn, the young architect who used to head up the Pennsylvania
Station Redevelopment Corporation, was putting together the Ground Zero
Lab at New York University's School of Continuing Education and Professional
Studies this summer. He saw this project as multidisciplinary, open to students
and professionals in the humanities and computer sciences as well as designers
and architects. The course, he said, would be an "opportunity to answer
one basic question: What do we want our city to become? It is a question
of culture and humanity, yet its realization lies within the powers of policy
and finance." If Alex thought he could bring culture and finance
and humanity together, what stops the men of the LMDC from doing the same?
Then there's Eli Attia, an architect whose frustration with the LMDC was
so great that he created a public forum on his own. In early August, Attia
posted an online petition (at www.phoenixUSA.org) that pleads: "We
ask that the government of the United States, the government of the State
of New York, the government of the state of New Jersey, and the government
of the City of New York act immediately to conduct an architectural and
design competition for the design of Ground Zero in its entirety."
From the first eleven signatures, which included those of our own publisher
Horace Havemeyer III and architect Peter Eisenman, the signatures grew in
number steadily; by August's end 10,411 people from all walks of life, including
many architects and designers, signed their names. One of them, Diana Griffith,
from Michigan, begged the power elite not to "allow something as important
as this to become a bureaucratic mess. We must have a design that is truly
a masterpiece; the vision of one mind, not a committee."
The people in power may comfortably ignore the work of a bright young teacher
and his students. But can they ignore something bigger than they are--the
voices of the people, now coming from many different directions, all talking
about the same thing--the vision thing?
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