Park 51 Opens to the Public
Park 51 opened to the public today.
Just around the corner from AN’s office sits the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. The image of a police officer guarding the mostly empty cast iron building has become such a part of the landscape, that we barely notice it anymore. But today, the doors were flung open onto a brightly lit gallery space adorned with color photographs of New York children representing almost every nation on earth.
Pictorial> Tribute in Light Pierces a Calm New York Sky
Tribute in Light. (Branden Klayko)
As night descended on a memory-laden New York City on Sunday, September 11, 88 light cannons were powered up, shooting beams of light into the air representing the profiles of the original Twin Towers. We stopped by Saturday night, as crews were putting the finishing touches on the display and double checking that all the lights performed flawlessly, and the close-up result was nothing short of amazing.
PBS Looks at the Nuts and Bolts of the WTC
(Courtesy NOVA/PBS)
For those who need an even bigger WTC fix, PBS’s long-running science program NOVA has a detailed, hour-long program on the engineering of the site, including an in-depth look at the materials used on site, as well as lengthy interviews with the architects, engineers, and contractors working on the colossal project. Thanks to unparalleled access granted by the Port Authority, NOVA gathered footage for the episode over a five year period, so expect lots of dramatic time lapse video.
Remembering 911: Tending to a Tribute in Light
Two clusters of 44 light cannons are arranged on a rooftop in Lower Manhattan. (Branden Klayko)
Perched on the rooftop of a parking garage in Lower Manhattan a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, two groups of 44 light cannons pointing skyward will soon project high-intensity beams of light into the night sky for Tribute in Light, marking the tenth anniversary of the 911 World Trade Center attacks. Last week, as a crew of 30 workers was positioning the lights and laying cable to a large generator on the sidewalk, we stopped by to learn more what’s involved with the massive display.
On View> PIIOTOS_WTC: 22 Brazilian Photographers Capture the World Trade Center on Film
Dive with a WTC View, 1990 by Tuca Reines.
PIIOTOS_WTC
1500 Gallery
511 W 25th St. #607
Through September 17
In honor of the tenth anniversary of September 11th, 1500 Gallery in West Chelsea will present PIIOTOS_WTC, an exhibition of photographs of the Twin Towers taken by 22 of Brazil’s most notable photographers. The images, which all have the World Trade Center site as their subject, span the last three decades of the 20th century. Selected photographers include Victor Andrade, Ali Karakas, and Roberto Linsker, among others. The selection is diverse, with works ranging from distant portrait landscapes of the towers from the Hudson River, to bold aerial views, black and white night shots, glowing, hazy sunsets, andclose-up structural shots, like the work of Tuca Reines, above. Gallery 1500—the only gallery in the world to focus specifically on Brazilian photography—brings together these poetic works, capturing the power, strength, and beauty of the city as it is no longer.
Blast of Personal Truth from Port Authority’s Chris Ward
The memorial as we looked down from the roof of the Memorial Pavilion on August 29. (Tami Hausman)
Far from the expected pablum that these events usually generate, Chris Ward, executive director of the Port Authority, gave a speech opening the New York Building Congress yesterday loaded to bear with fight, a lot of Good Fight, demanding continued federal funding for infrastructure. Along the way, he recalls his own version of the tortured path from Ground Zero grind to the Memorial Moment of meditation to come.
It’s quite a version and well worth a close read as he “recalls” Libeskind’s master plan as “gardens in the sky” and how that was “replaced with another vision, as realities of the site, the market” set in. Then he talks about “Breaking Away from Monumentalism” and “The Assessment” thanks to the Port Authority, which may or may not be the stinking months of pissing match between PA and Silverstein as they wrangled about responsibility for building the first then the other towers.
Sit back—but fasten your seat belt—You’ll be amazed to read what you went through:
World Trade Center Site Meets Irene’s Challenge
World Trade Center plaza under construction. (Courtesy Peter Walker)
Hurricane Irene was no match for tenth anniversary preparations at the World Trade Center site. In fact, some are claiming that the storm could have been a good thing for the soon-to-be-open memorial site. Joseph Daniels, president and CEO of the Memorial Foundation, told The Observer that all the trees on the site, including the Survivor Tree, made it out of the storm unscathed. And at a depth of only six feet, the eight-acre plaza “lid” did seem quite vulnerable just a few days ago. While there was some minor flooding and dripping underneath the plaza, Daniels said, there was no major damage. If anything, Daniels was saw Irene’s drips in a glass half full, pushing the project slightly ahead of schedule: “All the preparations we did in preparing for the storm actually helped prepare us for the opening, like removing excess equipment and temporary fencing that had been surrounding the pools.”
9/11 Memorial Plaza: How It Works
(all images courtesy Peter Walker Partners)
A decade after the 9/11 attacks, the public will soon be able to visit the site, much of which has been fully transformed into the 9/11 Memorial Plaza. While many were dispirited by the years of revisions to and deviations from the Libeskind master plan (which itself had many detractors), AN‘s recent visit to the plaza, crowded with workers laboring toward the anniversary opening, revealed a vast, contemplative space that we predict will function well as both a memorial and a public space. Next week AN will take a look at the design and offer a preview of the what the public can expect from the space, but, first, a look at how the highly engineered plaza works.
Montgomery Monument Returns
ICR's senior conservator Amanda Trienens takes in the teams work. (AN/Stoelker)
Amidst the flurry of activity surrounding the World Trade Center another monument is nearing completion, though this one is not exactly brand new. By the end of this week restorers of the Montgomery Monument at Trinity’s St. Paul’s Chapel will be securing the last arrow tip and guttae to the nation’s first monument.
WTC Update: Venting
The vertical vents on the south face Maki's 4 World Trade.
It’s been several weeks since our last visit to the World Trade Center site. On our return today we were taken with the manner in which different architects handle ventilation at the site. The most obvious example are the two large vent structures that protrude from the west side of the Memorial Plaza. The concrete buildings are a necessary solution to a complicated infrastructure problem. Davis Brody Bond (now Aedas) designed a mesh mask for the concrete structures and workers were putting the finishing touches on south building today.
Radii’s WTC Marketing Suite
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Jean-Pierre Mutti/Radii
An abstract vision of the site’s future is also a high-tech marketing display.
As work at the World Trade Center site progresses steadily, a matryoshka-like replica of it has taken shape on the 10th floor of 7 World Trade. With a view of the construction below, the Silverstein Properties marketing suite occupies the same floor as the WTC architects’ annex offices, providing a tableau of the working architects as well as the completed site to prospective tenants of towers Two, Three, and Four. Scaled architecture studio Radii Inc. have been designing models of the site since its earliest phases, so Silverstein’s senior VP of marketing and communications approached Radii partners Ed Wood and Leszek Stefanski with his conceptual ideas for the diorama. “He wanted it to be big,” said Wood. “Our first questions was, ‘What are the ceiling heights?’”
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