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Occupant Safety & Escape Technology Innovation MUST become THE key issue, in WTC Reconstruction.
The project is dazzling - an undeniable expression of Architectural Power expressing the Triumph of the Human Mind and Spirit. Like Flight, natural and mechanical, it is a Re-iteration of the Life Message; a source of its own, and in its own right, a life giver, in ways, profound and powerful.
If we apprehend every terrorist or saboteur on earth, though, buildings will still collapse, and planes crash. We can never promise otherwise. We can, however, mimimize loss of human life in such instances, by, finally behaving responsibly in the matter of Occupant Safety & Escape Technology Innovation.
However, what ought to be an obvious and commanding concept was fated to be tried long ago, before technolgy was ready for its requirments, and then, when it proved a spectacular failure, the whole idea was buried, as deep as it goes, and its inventors humiliated. And so the idea was suppressed most effectively - not even brought up in conversation or thought, 'ever after'.
OK, but "what about now?"
With normal attention, and NOT suppression, Occupant Safety & Escape Technology Innovations might have been one of the Jewels of the American Bi-Centennial Celebrations in 1976, and the horrendous loss of life on Nineleven 2001 averted.
However, so far, Occupant Safety & Escape Technology Innovations remain ignored, failed, defaulted, and even sneered off the list, by those whose offices bear some responsibility in the matter.
The entries/links on this page tell a bit of the story.
But "Needs YOU" to pick up on the idea and share it in YOUR circle, and to your leaders, so that the horrendous loss of life we suffered need never happen again.
Enjoy and respond, if possible.
Final Tally - 2,749
Friday, January 23, 2004
Final WTC Death Toll Said Down to 2,749
4 hours ago
NEW YORK - Three names have been removed from the list of those killed in the World Trade Center attack, bringing the death toll to 2,749, which could stand as the final count, according to a newspaper report.
The official list of those missing now matches the number of death certificates the city has issued for victims for the first time, The New York Times reported Friday.
"Based on the information we have now, we believe this is the final number," Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city's medical examiner, told the Times.
Three names were removed from the list of the missing this week after officials could not confirm that they were killed, the Times said.
Two weeks after the attack, the number of missing-person reports peaked at 6,886 amid confusion and calls from frantic relatives. The number stood at 2,792 from December 2002 until October, when 40 unsolved cases were removed from the list.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A third~millennium song
"We are diverse and the diversity is the dynamic!
Exhilirated
at the sense of our role as visitors in the universe.
We who visit are the sons of the morning,
the daughters of the day!
We have seen our souls at noon,
on the busy park in the center of town,
and danced to rhythms of our own work!
As always, there is the futility,
certainty of disaster, but also of salvation!
We glitter in the interactive,
more and better than ever before and,
accepting our part in the diversity of who we are,
we stopped the lament!
We found our lights!
and we share wholeheartedly,
our individual contributions,
scrambling to use the new lights well;
sons of the morning, daughters of the day -
making a day of light once again!"
Ellen Smith Fagan
Copyright 2003 Ellen Smith Fagan
Comments Two Years Later ~ September 11, 2003
Most of us have it down to normal tears, the hated word "Time" is still the tyrant,
the ugly, bossy nurse dominating the healing process for all grieved, now and always.The Beauty and Power of the Human Spirit...we find, to our delight, that we DO recover! Nothing can undo such a brutal pain. Its memory will always be there, but we find that, Life and Love will not be denied. Do it easy , or do it hard...but the powers of the life forces in us will win !
The now-famous
"bathtub", the foundation of the Twin Towers, apparently saved most of Lower Manhattan from total inundation by the waters of the the Harbor, when the buildings collapsed.
It acted as a retaining wall in a scenario which could have been even worse than it was.
This foundation has become a symbol of the Indomitable American Spirit, which withstands a great deal, survives and wins again!
Excerpted from NYtimes:
In 9/11 Design, Rules Are Set to Be Broken
By EDWARD WYATT
Officials overseeing the competition to design a memorial to the victims
of the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, and the 1993 bombing of the
World Trade Center promised yesterday that all entries would be
considered, even those that stray from the official guidelines for the
placement and content of the memorial.
At a news conference announcing the start of the design competition,
some of the jurors who will select the winner encouraged entrants to
challenge those boundaries. Maya Lin, the designer of the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial and one of 13 jurors in the World Trade Center
competition, challenged entrants to come up with "a new way of defining
what a memorial can be."
Another juror, James E. Young, a scholar with expertise in memorials and
remembrance, said of entrants: "Anything they might have in mind, any
response, will be considered here. We want architects and artists ,
anybody who submits, to feel they can go where their imaginations,
where their mourning needs to take them in order to articulate some
relationship to this terrible loss."
In essentially voiding some of the guidelines that they had just
released, the officials said they were trying to signal that neither the
memorial competition nor the jury would be influenced by the kind of
political pressure that shaped the selection of Daniel Libeskind's
design for the trade center site.
Earlier this year, a committee of directors of the Lower Manhattan
Development Corporation recommended a design by a group called Think,
one of two finalists in the site competition. Think proposed two
latticework towers as a symbolic replacement for the destroyed twin towers.
But Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who favored
Mr. Libeskind's design, overruled the directors.
Kevin Rampe, the interim president of the development corporation, which
is overseeing the competition, said yesterday that officials were open
to the possibility that "it may take going outside of those guidelines"
for competitors to express their creativity.
As an example of breaking boundaries, Dr. Young pointed to Ms. Lin, who
he said "broke some of the rules on the way to her spectacular Vietnam
Veterans Memorial," and to Mr. Libeskind, the architect of the site
design, who "had to break all kinds of rules to make his design."
Mr. Libeskind will be a technical consultant to the jury, but he will
not be involved in the selection of the winning design, Mr. Rampe said.
Competitors have until May 29 to register and until June 30 to submit
their designs. The field will be narrowed to about five finalists, and
the winner will be selected in the fall, officials said.
The officials said that all entries must conform to the display
guidelines published by the development corporation. Those can be seen
at www.wtcsitememorial.org on the Internet or obtained by faxing a
request, with the entrant's mailing address, to 800-717-5699.
A $25 entry fee is required to register for the competition. Officials
said the money would go toward building the memorial.
The guidelines say that competitors may create a memorial "of any type,
shape, height or concept," that includes five physical elements:
Officials expect all those elements to be placed within the 4.5 acres
bounded by the walls built to hold back the waters of the Hudson River.
The walls are at the center of Mr. Libeskind's design.
But the guidelines also note that areas outside the sunken area can be
included in a design and "may be considered by the jury if, in
collaboration with the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, they are
deemed feasible and consistent with site plan objectives."
The jury, made up largely of artists, museum curators and design
professionals, also includes a downtown resident and the spouse of a
victim of the 9/11 attack.
Paula Grant Berry, a juror whose husband, David, was killed at the trade
center, said the memorial would "be for all the people of New York and
really for the world, but especially for all the families."
Ms. Berry added: "I am determined that a memorial be built where we will
be proud to bring our children. We must never lose sight of why we are
doing this and who we are doing it for. Magnificent people died, and we
must be magnificent in how we honor them."
Asked what advice she had for those entering the competition, Ms. Lin
said: "You enter a competition not necessarily to win but to say what
you truly believe needs to be done there. I think you should think about
what could a memorial be here. Is it a place? Is it an object? Does it
frame the site? I hope we get submissions from people who just believe
that their solution is right."
A Remedy: Escape pods for Tall Buildings and Airplanes
Aeronautical Engineers' idea, tabled for tech reasons in the fifties,
are probably possible now. Get involved in its support if you can!
The attacks of September 11, 2001 changed a lot of lives.
The worst of it is that they did not need to happen!
If a prosecuteable case against Osama Bin Laden had been able to be made,
after his earlier attacks, and the man and his Taliban brought to justice
in a more timely fashion, the Twin Towers would still be soaring to the heavens,
and thousands of grieving survivors would be doing life normally.
If escape concepts for the planes and skyscrapers,
"on the drawing board" fifty years ago, had been developed,
perfected and put into use, once again, this latest terrorist crisis would,
at least, have been less costly in lives lost.
The Third Millennium is full of miracles of the best kind,
but it is also guaranteed to bring its share of horrors.
It is not likely that terrorism will be eliminated completely;
we must have our freedom to experience acceptable quality of life.
But there is no reason for it to cost lives to the extent
that we have so horribly experienced.
Even the basic civil defense-type preparedness reduced
the casualties at the Pentagon attack site
from an early estimate of 800 to around one hundred-a significant number,
and one that should encourage preparedness in all of us.
The airport next to the building, with planes parked within view of Pentagon staff,
motivated a workshop of a sort...
"What if one of those planes slipped and crashed into the building?"
The logic of any eight-year-old mind resulted in a plan of
escape from the Pentagon building,achieved just a few weeks before the attack:
which routes to take, basic fire safety response review,
and a buddy system for helping others in the office.
These few actions saved SEVEN HUNDRED LIVES!
And yet such simple work is still carried out by too few ,
and the concept of developing technology for fast, reliable escape/evacuation from planes and skyscrapers,
though fairly simple, in our tech-genius world, has been ignored entirely.
At nineleven, a few home handyman ideas received publicity, and sneers.
One "left-handed blessing" of this cry for deliverance from such endangerment has resulted in much-improved Preparedness in other areas, thanks to the Department of Homeland Security's invention, and
the efforts of public and private groups and individuals, but much of these wonderful new ideas would not have saved the occupants of WTC in a similar scenario.
For my late Father, and my late husband, both with science achievements,
and into their work, others of their groups,
I feel duty-bound on this subject:
In the fifties, my Father showed us a Popular Mechanics
magazine with art showing the passenger compartment
of an airplane sliding away from a burning airplane,
like a train car with a parachute, taking the passengers safely to ground
....nearly fifty years ago!
"Wha'hoppen? ", he would be saying if he could......why have there
been no followups on such ideas?
Similarly, not visible externally, but like elevator cars on each floor,
escape pods, operating with mechanics
independent of the power systems in a skyscraper,
could easily eject/evacuate a building's occupants in a few moments,
providing a bailout, at every floor level, and
elevators and stairwells ,"killer chimneys"in such a scenario, would not need to be used.
Primitive graphics of the idea described here will be passed to
any who might implement it, but only on request.
I had to grow up and stay in my focus like everyone else.
Why did not the architects, builders, owners, or occupants
of the Towers insist on a simple escape technology?
In every other area of life, safety escapes are required.
In the eye-opening aftermath of this tragedy,
such concepts are so difficult to deal with!
We are genius, all-powerful, modern Americans!
We don't do dumb stuff!
It is not possible that we could have been so negligent, but we were!
And now our hope of salvation/redemption, from our sins of omission
lies in reconstruction that insures such horror will never happen again!
No matter what government can do about terrorism, no matter what architects can do to help skyscapers withstand attack and collapse, no matter how careful we are
against human error, planes will crash, buildings may collapse, but with the attention
given to effective escape pods, there will not be the horrific loss of life!
Not one of us gets reprieved from this burden until we can say:
GROUND ZERO-type casualties - NEVER AGAIN!
At nine-eleven 2001, my escape pod memory would not leave me alone, so I passed this note around online, with a casual graphic sketch to help the reader understand my description. I sent it to anyone I could find, and showed it to friends and family...e-mailed it to those
relevant in techworld and government, and received two impressive replies!
Friends who had worked with the scientists mentioned above
at United Technologies...librarians, encouraged me to take it to UT.
OSHA also liked my letter and sent me links for proceeding.
United Technologies offices reception desk was one I had passed many times in visits to the Connecticut Commission on the Arts offices and gallery next door. But when I approached the front desk receptionist, I suddenly felt like a wildwoman on a binge of some sort, became embarassed and said "Good Day".
Regrouping, getting moral support and will try again.
I will probably also send this to the wonderful Architect Libeskind, mentioned above.
Whether I achieve or not, "I'll leave this old world with a satisfied mind" on the subject, as the song proclaimed.
Update, February 2004:
I have written everyone remotely attached to the project about the jetpack, elevatorcar-like escape pods...and will continue to do so as comfortably fits into my tasking.
Although
OSHA and United Technology people were kind, respectful, even excited, and referred me, I cannot followup on their leads. Because I would need a grant to make it a halftime job to followup effectively, without self-destructing.
My own work demands my priority.
A discovery:
The site for the group of Nineleven Survivors ( link below ). Activated to insure that the WTC reconstruction includes safety mechanisms omitted in the towers.
However, the group is new and so far, have gotten "a promise to install fire extinguishers"....not cool, but interaction.
I think its their grieving......I went through a bad one like that long ago....it is very depleting, and so I question not the motive, but the wisdom of leaving the work governing safety tech decisions for WTC restoration in their hands.
It takes time for a group to get going effectively, and they seem pointed in the right direction...But the correct safety considerations probably need to be achieved before long....will they "get there" in time? Once construction begins,
it may be too late.
Relevant Links
The Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporationoffers data on the heart of the project and links in all directions.
Daniel Liebeskind.comhis page...the Berlin-centered architect whose design tops this page.
The Skyscraper Safety CampaignSurvivors of Nineleven organized to "do better". If you can help them, please do so.
There are other groups involved, many of them very expressive in their desire to find truth in the Nineleven Hearings and implement things that will prevent any such horror from repeating itself. This month, I found stories of these groups chasing, physically, after government representatives who found it necessary to hide behind a door from them. I think they are simply fearful that the matter will not find solution, if the opportunities for it all, "right now" , are denied.
Are they right?
I love aeronautics, and am a loyal fan of it all since childhood...father and brother both with service and postwar work and interests in the skies...but I do not sympathize with the industry, which has been getting a lot of exposιe coverage. Hopefully, freedom of the press will win improvements all around.
I welcome respectful comment and questions,
and am always careful to reject or report those whose intent to contact is violent and nettiquette absent. If an issue is important, good manners are essential, or the
issue self-destructs in the mιlιe.
....elle
Reflecting Pools Picked for 9-11 Memorial
Wed Jan 7, 1:42 AM
By AMY WESTFELDT, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - A design consisting of two reflecting pools and a large grove of trees was chosen for the World Trade Center memorial after an eight-month competition that drew more than 5,000 entries from around the world, officials announced Tuesday.The "Reflecting Absence" memorial, created by designers Michael Arad and Peter Walker, was chosen by a 13-member jury of artists, architects and civic and cultural leaders. The winning memorial was announced by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency overseeing the rebuilding of the site.
The reflecting pools will mark the footprints of the World Trade Center towers. The development group said a revised version of the memorial will be unveiled next week, with significant changes that add trees and greenery around the footprints and expose the slurry wall, the last surviving piece of the trade center.The design previously had a vast open plaza marked by just a few trees, but will now include "teeming groves of trees, traditional affirmations of life and rebirth," said jury chairman Vartan Gregorian, of the Carnegie Corporation of New York."The result is a memorial that expresses the incalculable loss of life and its regeneration," Gregorian said.The development agency also said it is flexible about the grouping of victims' names at the memorial, a point bitterly fought by rescue workers who want separate recognition for their colleagues.
Still, the memorial drew an icy reception from some victims' families, who accused the jury of ignoring their input during a hasty deliberation and said the design failed to convey the horror of the attack.Anthony Gardner, who lost his brother in the Sept. 11 attack and is a member of a coalition for family groups, said the design is "unacceptable". "This is minimalism, and you can't minimalize the impact and the enormity of Sept. 11," Gardner said. "You can't minimalize the deaths. You can't minimalize the response of New Yorkers."
The memorial, considered the long shot of three finalists chosen by the jury in November, will remember all of the victims of the Sept. 11 attack, including those killed at the Pentagon, in Pennsylvania and aboard the hijacked airliners. It also will honor the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.The memorial will be one of two focal points at the trade center site, along with the 1,776-foot glass skyscraper known as the Freedom Tower. Four other buildings are planned where the trade center once stood.The two pools in the design would sit 30 feet below street level, connected by an underground passageway and a small alcove where visitors can light candles. "I think it's an idea that is simple, that is bold, that clearly refers to the footprints of the building," said Daniel Libeskind, the architect who designed the master plan for the 16-acre site.A jubilant Arad, a 31-year-old Israeli native who has designed two police stations in his job at the city housing authority, said he was surrounded by well-wishers after learning his plan was chosen. "I hope that I will be able to honor the memory of all those who perished and create a place where we may all grieve and find meaning," he said. Walker, a San Francisco-based landscape designer whose major projects include the redevelopment of the site of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, was added to the memorial project after Arad submitted his design.
Not all family members objected to the memorial. Monica Iken, who heads another family group, said jurors "got the message that this is going to be the most visited memorial in the world."
"I think they took their time and thought about the things that families needed in this memorial," she said. Mayor Michael Bloomberg noted that the number of submissions was unprecedented for such a contest. "The most important thing is we come up with the right memorial and this process had thousands of people who had suggestions," Bloomberg said. "They whittled it down from thousands to one. You're not going to please everybody." The jury reviewed 5,201 submissions beginning last summer, narrowing the field to eight in November. By the time the jury convened on Monday, it had chosen three finalists: "Garden of Lights," "Passages of Light: the Memorial Cloud" and "Reflecting Absence." "Garden of Lights" featured a public area filled with lights, one for each victim. The three-level memorial had a garden on the top and a private area for families of the victims at the twin towers' footprints, connected by a path and a stream of water. "Passages of Light," by three New York designers, included an open-air structure with cathedral-like vaults and a glass walkway and would have an altar for each victim.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. printable version © 2003 Comcast Cable Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Update June 20, 2004 on:
The sections are separated by horizontal rules to aid in finding the one you prefer.
I sent the letter to a number of valid desks..."there is always hope".
The Incredible Shrinking Daniel Libeskind
By ROBIN POGREBIN
ON Feb. 27, 2003, Daniel Libeskind stood on a podium under the palm trees in the Winter Garden's soaring glass atrium the American flag behind him, some 300 members of the press before him and entered the architectural history books as master planner of the World Trade Center site. A model of his plan was dramatically unveiled, praised by Gov. George E. Pataki as "an emotional protection of the site of ground zero itself" and by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as restoring "lower Manhattan to its rightful place in the world." Mr. Libeskind quickly became a media darling and a bona fide cultural icon, from his spiky hair and funky rectangular glasses down to his elk-skin cowboy boots.
Yet last week just over a year later when ground zero's cultural tenants were announced in the same spot, Mr. Libeskind was far less visible. He sat in the audience, one row behind officials from the city, state and Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Governor Pataki praised the new transportation hub designed by Santiago Calatrava; the memorial, designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker; and the Freedom Tower, which is being designed by David M. Childs, although Mr. Libeskind is collaborating with him. The governor only remembered to mention Mr. Libeskind at the last minute, after spotting him in the audience, saying that of course it all started with Mr. Libeskind's design.
Mr. Libeskind, smiling back at him, seemed satisfied. But people involved with the redevelopment of downtown say he has ample reason to be disappointed; in the year since he was anointed Architect on High, his influence, control and stature have steadily diminished. "Where is Daniel at this point?" said Robert Ivy, editor in chief of Architectural Record. "Has he been marginalized? How many of his ideas remain?"
Not many, it seems. The signature elements of his master plan the Wedge of Light, the Park of Heroes, the exposed slurry wall indeed, the very components that made Mr. Libeskind the emotional favorite among those competing for the job, have been altered, reduced or eliminated. With Governor Pataki determined to break ground on July 4, work is moving ahead on the Freedom Tower, but the planning is now dominated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architectural firm hired by Larry A. Silverstein, the site's leaseholder.
According to those with knowledge of the proceedings, Mr. Libeskind does not even attend the meetings at which the plans are currently discussed. His once gushy press has lately been dominated by controversy: his power struggle with Mr. Childs; his battle with Mr. Silverstein over his fees. Governor Pataki still publicly praises him. But the shift in the architect's position suggests that the governor may no longer be an active champion of his cause.
To be sure, certain broad elements of Mr. Libeskind's "Memory Foundations" remain: a site divided by Fulton and Greenwich Streets into unequal quadrants, a memorial precinct in the southwest corner and an L-shaped array of office towers along Church and Vesey Streets, the highest pinnacle at the northwest corner. But in part that's a function of the political mandate to preserve the original tower footprints, limiting the number of ways the site could be arranged.
Arguably the sole remaining trace of what made Mr. Libeskind's ideas distinctive is the spire on the Freedom Tower and some of the people involved in downtown redevelopment say even that may not survive.
How did it happen? How did Mr. Libeskind plunge from dominant visionary to supporting player? Several theories are currently in circulation: Mr. Libeskind had too little experience in the world of large-scale office buildings and profit-seeking New York City developers. Or he was politically savvy enough to know which battles can and can't be won. Or by nature he's less an executor of plans than a dreamer.
To this last, Mr. Libeskind said: "Dreamers are not impractical. The world has been made by practical dreamers."
In a recent interview at his Rector Street office near the World Trade Center site, the architect said that his plan had not so much been eclipsed as it had evolved just as he intended it to do. "I think the plan has been going extremely well," he said. "We are absolutely on track."
He added: "This is not one of those master plans that are going to be forced on people like the Rome of the dictators. It has to be robust enough to withstand all the complexity and all the negotiations."
Asked whether he felt he needed to protect his original design, he said: "I'm not a guard dog. I'm a participant and I have to work with everybody."
It's a gracious stance, but distinctly at odds with the one he took in December 2003, when Mr. Childs's design for the Freedom Tower was announced. Mr. Libeskind told The New York Post that his role from then on would be to maintain the "guardianship of the master plan."
"When the politicians and architects and investors are long gone," he said at the time, "I'll still be on Rector Street making sure that every building on this site is dedicated to a very special moment in our history."
Ironically, his ability to compromise although it has only lately come into full view may have sown the seeds at the beginning of the design process for his eventual marginalization. He was smart enough to propose a flexible plan, one that could change in response to the needs of developers and politicians. That choice made him the favorite candidate for the job, but it also made him expendable.
MR. LIBESKIND first emerged on the scene as something of a savior. An initial round of planning for ground zero produced six designs most of them by the firm Beyer Blinder Belle that were generally deemed uninspired. Public disappointment in those results sent the development corporation back to the drawing board, and in Round Two Mr. Libeskind, who was supposed to serve as a juror, submitted his own designs to much acclaim. He conceived of the major components with a careful eye toward symbolism a spiral of five towers, including one 1,776-foot spire echoing the Statue of Liberty; a Park of Heroes; a waterfall; a memorial descending down to bedrock.
For the public in particular, the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks the plan was a welcome antidote to a process that had seemed chiefly concerned with maximizing office space. And for Mr. Pataki, according to several downtown redevelopment officials, championing the plan (over the arguably more popular proposal by the architectural team Think) was a chance to make his mark in a period otherwise dominated by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. "Daniel Libeskind created a plan for the 16-acre site which would both remember loss and celebrate life," said Lynn Rasic, a spokeswoman for Mr. Pataki. "His vision continues to guide the rebuilding process from providing a cultural framework around the memorial to reconnecting the site with surrounding neighborhoods to creating the height of the Freedom Tower."
Mr. Libeskind had a moving pedigree his parents had survived the Holocaust; he had designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin and a way of talking about both his own experience as an immigrant and his ideas for the site that was heavy-handed but affecting. Kevin Rampe, the president of the development corporation, said Mr. Libeskind's delivery was as crucial to his success as his ideas. "The one thing that people will never forgive in this city is a lack of passion," Mr. Rampe said. "He certainly relayed that passion and energy which I think helped drive the process forward."
But Mr. Libeskind's post-selection honeymoon didn't last long. Before two months had passed, pundits and architectural experts began calling his plan pie in the sky. Douglas Durst, a Times Square developer, told The New York Times: "I would expect the developer will negotiate what the buildings will look like. Ultimately, it would resemble the conceptual plan only in spirit."
Sure enough, little by little, the pieces began to change. "It very quickly began to morph," Mr. Ivy said. "Committees have come in and modified. The site became less deep, it became" he paused "less."
The first major change was to the Park of Heroes, which was cut roughly in half by a redesign of the Freedom Tower and an attached office building.
In February 2003, Mr. Libeskind was asked to raise the floor of his memorial. It was originally to be 70 feet deep, so as to place visitors right on the foundation of the original towers; now it would be raised by about 40 feet, so as to accommodate several floors to shore up the slurry walls and provide parking for tourist buses.
As for Mr. Libeskind's suggestion of a waterfall up to 100 feet tall, somewhere in the process it just went away.
Perhaps the most emotionally resonant element of Mr. Libeskind's original design was the plan to orient the memorial in such a way that each year, on the morning of Sept. 11, "the sun will shine without shadow." But in May 2003, the architect Eli Appia published a study showing that this so-called Wedge of Light would be in shadow much of that time from a building across the street. And Mr. Calatrava's design for the Path terminal, announced in January, moved the station north into the center of the plaza, which Mr. Libeskind had reserved for his Wedge.
Then came the battle over the Freedom Tower, the tallest building designated for the site. In May 2003, Mr. Silverstein announced that Mr. Libeskind would inspire but not actually design the buildings on the site. Mr. Libeskind said he was unconcerned. "I've been assured by Larry, whom I like, that I'll be meaningfully involved in the design of the building," he said at the time.
In July 2003, Mr. Silverstein persuaded the Port Authority to consider several changes to Mr. Libeskind's vision and hired Mr. Childs, an architect he had worked with extensively, to draw up plans. The Port Authority asked Mr. Libeskind to study the effect of moving his tallest tower to the eastern portion of the site, closer to a planned transit hub, and to consider adding an office tower above that. "Mr. Silverstein needed to build a building that had rentable floor plates," said Elliott Sclar, a professor of urban planning and public affairs at Columbia University. "Libeskind represents this vision that's floating above it all."
Mr. Libeskind fought back, together with his wife and business partner, Nina. If Mr. Libeskind is the artist with his head in the clouds, people who have worked with them say, Ms. Libeskind has her feet firmly on the ground, fiercely guarding her husband's interests. "I try to back Daniel whenever he's defending anything," she said in an interview. They hired Edward W. Hayes, who was a law school classmate of Mr. Pataki's and a model for the lawyer Tommy Killian in "The Bonfire of the Vanities," to negotiate with Mr. Silverstein.
Mr. Silverstein's office sent a letter to the development corporation and the Port Authority, claiming that delayed decisions could cause him to miss the deadline that the governor had set for groundbreaking. In April, Mr. Pataki made it clear that he was handing over much of the responsibility for the rebuilding to Mr. Silverstein, the only person on the scene with money who could actually build something. "As the governor said when he outlined his ambitious plan for rebuilding Lower Manhattan," Lisa Dewald Stoll, a spokeswoman for Mr. Pataki, said at the time, "this process leaves no room for error or delay, for parochial concerns or unnecessary legal battles." She added: "Quite simply, you're either part of the team or you're not. The schedule will be met."
The wrestling for control of the Freedom Tower became daily fodder for the news media for several weeks running. "Libeskind's Luster Eclipsed by SOM," said The New York Sun, referring to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. "An In-Spired Shift at WTC," said The New York Daily News. As Mr. Sclar put it, "There was something admirable about the way he defended the integrity of his plan, but you have all these players with all these other interests."
Some started to sense blood in the water. On June 4, 2003, The New York Post gleefully introduced readers to "Fishing From the Pavement," a book of poetry that Mr. Libeskind had published in 1997, which included "10-dollar words and deliberately obscure references to radishes, bodily functions and genitalia." That same month, as Mr. Libeskind was struggling to retain his image as a serious architect, a pullout ad for Audi appeared in 15 Condι Nast magazines, featuring him posed inside a cardboard box.
One afternoon the next month, Mr. Silverstein and Mr. Libeskind holed up together and hammered out a truce; when they emerged, in the wee hours of the following morning, Mr. Childs was the lead architect, Mr. Libeskind was his collaborator. He defended his continued role: "It's not a matter of just moving a building here or there. It can change the views, the light and wind conditions, the composition of the entire site."
By fall 2003, the buzz downtown was that at its most basic, without all the symbolic flourishes, Mr. Libeskind's plan had turned out to be not so very different from the original six designs that were so roundly rejected. Joseph Seymour, the executive director of the Port Authority, told The New York Times in September: "When we roll it out, the land-use plan is going to be almost exactly what Beyer Blinder Belle proposed."
On Dec. 19, 2003, when the two architects appeared at the Federal Hall National Memorial to reveal a glistening, nine-foot-tall acrylic model, it was clear that Mr. Childs's vision had prevailed. The new tower eliminated some of the angular shapes in Mr. Libeskind's original drawings and devoted upper stories to office space rather than to the proposed gardens. On paper, the tower would still be topped by an off-center, 276-foot spire, but in Mr. Childs's lengthy discussion of the design, he scarcely mentioned that feature. Even so, Kent L. Barwick, the president of the Municipal Art Society, blessed the unlikely couple. "Though it was a forced marriage," he said at the time, "I think it worked out astonishingly well."
Mr. Pataki, who appeared with them at the presentation, has been careful not to take sides officially in their negotiations. "The governor tasked both Libeskind and Childs to collaborate and create a compelling design for the Freedom Tower which would work with the Libeskind master plan," Ms. Rasic said recently, "and they succeeded in doing so." But behind the scenes, had he in fact changed horses? Those close to the process say his loyalty was consistent: not to a particular aesthetic vision but to whoever could guarantee a groundbreaking in time for the opening of the Republican National Convention.
On NBC's "Today" show the day before the unveiling, Katie Couric asked Mr. Childs about his "rocky relationship" with Mr. Libeskind. "Creative minds have different thoughts about how you do things," Mr. Childs responded. "I wouldn't want to work with somebody who would just say yes." Asked more recently to describe his current working relationship with Mr. Libeskind, Mr. Childs declined to comment.
In an interview after the unveiling, Mr. Libeskind distanced himself from the project. "I'm not the architect of this building," he told The New York Post. "You have to ask Mr. Childs."
IN January 2004, Mr. Libeskind's plan was further eroded with the selection of a memorial design. Mr. Arad's plan called for the memorial to be brought level with the surrounding terrain. Mr. Libeskind's hallmark, the memorial pit, was now to be flat.
Since then, as the development process has moved forward, it has necessarily skewed toward the nuts and bolts: assessing environmental impact, solving technical problems and hiring people to begin construction, areas in which Mr. Libeskind, unlike Mr. Childs, is not an expert. Mr. Libeskind resettled himself somewhat outside of the spotlight he had once occupied and began to focus on other projects a 350,000-square-foot multimedia building at the City University of Hong Kong, a shopping center in Switzerland and a performing arts complex in Dublin. People working on the project say that officials were tired of hearing about the creative conflict between him and Mr. Childs. "The Port Authority has told him clearly, `Get on board,' " someone with knowledge of those communications said.
To be sure, he is now spoken of as though the sun has set on his real contribution. Madelyn Wils, a director of the development corporation, said, "He's done a great job with designing the master plan and now he needs to work with the future architects, making sure their buildings make sense."
Meanwhile, Mr. Libeskind and his employer are engaged in a dispute over the value of that work. Mr. Libeskind had already been compensated by the development corporation for his work on the master plan. But he gave Mr. Silverstein a bill for $800,000 for his subsequent work on the Freedom Tower. Mr. Silverstein countered with an offer of $125,000, in part because Mr. Libeskind had not kept time sheets and could not substantiate his bill. The dispute has yet to be resolved.
"The attitude is very different in Europe," one architect familiar with the dispute said. "Architects demand much higher fees than in New York and people don't question the costs. They're the gods."
Some believe downtown officials ought to have stood by their master planner. "Others should have fought for him," Mr. Ivy said. "This is a case where the forces that be were inadequately cohered. We needed someone with the governor's power, the mayor's moxie to bring the parties together."
To others, the dimming of Mr. Libeskind's glow is inevitable, a function of both a culture with a short attention span and the proper progression from overall design to individual detail. If there is less excitement about the design for the World Trade Center now than there once was, said Frederic M. Bell, the executive director of the American Institute of Architects' New York Chapter, it is "not through any diminishment of respect" for Mr. Libeskind. "When the actual buildings get designed, they supplant the drawings of what they might look like with what they will look like, and that's natural."
For his part, Mr. Libeskind is resolutely positive about the changes he and his master plan have been through. "With each new piece, something good has happened to the plan," he said. "It's an amplification and an accomplishment of the fundamental ideas of the site and in many cases it's an improvement."
"I don't approach this as my plan," he continued. "It's the plan of New York. That's why the plan won, because it's very practical." He added: "True art, you have to work with business. We are living in a market economy."
The once feisty architect seems to have concluded that it is easier to work within the system than to fight it. Whatever the case, he is already reaping the benefits of his newfound prominence, having been asked to build several skyscrapers in Europe. And perhaps whether Mr. Libeskind proves to be the most influential designer of ground zero doesn't really matter; he was the first, and first impressions count for a lot.
"He provided the vision," Mr. Rampe of the development corporation said. "Has that vision changed? Sure. But he allowed us to see our way out of the darkness of Sept. 11 and to figure out what to do with the site."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times June 20, 2004
Transportation Board Member Leaves Post With a Warning
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON, June 17 - The longest-serving member of the National Transportation Safety Board is leaving office with a warning that the board is losing its technical expertise, and that lack of aircraft maintenance is a threat to aviation safety.
The board member, John J. Goglia, was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1995, and his second term expired at the end of last year. Mr. Goglia, 59, the only airline mechanic ever to be a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, will serve until Sunday, and his successor, Deborah Hersman, 33, a senior member of the Democratic staff of the Senate Commerce Committee, is to be sworn in on Monday.
His departure leaves the board with a single member with extensive aviation technical experience, Richard F. Healing, a longtime director of safety and survivability for the Navy. Another member with a technical background, George W. Black, a civil engineer and highway safety specialist, was replaced in January 2003.
As a result, Mr. Goglia said, "power has shifted to the staff." The board has a staff of mechanical engineers, metallurgists, computer scientists and human factors experts who prepare reports that the five board members then debate, amend and approve.
Federal law requires that three members of the board have backgrounds in areas relevant to transportation safety, but nominees can qualify by having a background in regulation.
Before his appointment, Mr. Goglia was a crash investigator for the International Association of Machinists. He plans to become a safety consultant specializing in aviation and railroads.
Asked about Mr. Goglia's statement that the board was losing expertise, Ellen Engleman Connors, the chairwoman of the board and a former head of the Transportation Department's division in charge of hazardous materials transportation, said, "I vehemently disagree."
"Given the level of Ph.D.'s and P.E.'s we have on staff at N.T.S.B., we are highly technically qualified as an agency," Ms. Connors said. "The board members are not the investigators, but the policy makers," she said. Using the lingo that crash investigators use to describe themselves, she said, "We're not the tin kickers."
Carol J. Carmody, another member, who has twice served as acting chairwoman and had worked for years at the Federal Aviation Administration and as the United States representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization, said, "The board is enriched by having people who are varied."
She said that Mr. Goglia had made a major contribution but that "I do not think board members need to be investigators."
After the crash of a ValuJet DC-9 in 1996 because of a maintenance problem, Mr. Goglia, an expert on F.A.A. regulations, persuaded his colleagues on the board to amend the staff's report to list the airline's lapses in the statement of probable cause. The F.A.A. rules make the airline responsible for maintenance work performed by third-party contractors.
Maintenance problems were the cause of two widely publicized airliner crashes, he said.
In January 2003, a Beech 1900 crashed shortly after takeoff from the Charlotte, N.C., airport, largely because of errors in servicing the plane's tail a few days earlier. All 21 people on board were killed. Last Aug. 26, another Beech 1900 crashed off Hyannis, Mass., killing both pilots, the only people on board. The preliminary report indicates a similar maintenance problem.
"You should not have those kinds of errors, especially on a product line as old as that," Mr. Goglia said. The Beech 1900 entered service in 1991.
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My Letter in Response to the Stories, above, sent to The New York Times Forum and titled, "Not Without The Escape Pods"
A long time ago, comedian Bill Cosby stunned us with his famous, "Hope the plane don't crash!" joke.
He was referring to the thing every boarding airline passenger is thinking but can never say. It's how we are, and we must accept that. Sometimes the thing we need to say or do most, is frozen somewhere inside, never to emerge.
HOWEVER, IN LIGHT OF NINELEVEN,
IT IS "NOT OK" TO BE TOO TIMID OR COMMON, TO BE SURE TO INCLUDE THE MOST AMAZING OCCUPANT SAFETY/ ESCAPE FEATURES EVER DESIGNED BY MAN.
I am positive that a huge chunk of the
dissention at WTC Reconstruction is
caused by this ridiculous blind spot!
We are Americans!
We are ingenuity personified!
We always build the better mousetrap!
We always make a message of international hope and salvation!
It's just what we do !
It is just who we are!
The stunning and healing message of
escape pods for the tall buildings and planes is one
I truly believed the architects would not
overlook. In addition to the practical functions, its physical presence, artfully included in the design, creates a visual statement that heals the grieving, and says..
"never again!" to such horrendous losses.
No one can promise that a plane or a tall building will not fall , or be knocked down, and we are building more of them every day.
We do have, however, a DUTY to install optimum occupant safety and escape features....and we're not doing it, so far !
And people like me a horrified one more time over it all ! More collateral damage from
nineleven.
To the movers of the Reconstruction:
Hey guys! You have been society's inspiration and heroes for so long!
Please do not let us down in this one, most important matter !
As of last week, groups composed of survivors of the nineleven casualties have been lobbying for safety and escape
functionalities ...... but the feelings are so high, due to our trauma, that the developers so far, have ..."agreed to install fire extinguishers"....!!!....an overt insult, and show of dilletante-ism, when such evasion and theatrics could be a worse disaster than nineleven itself !
When we fail to choose salvation, we choose, by default, degeneration, in direct proportion to the scope of the matter.
Help !
elle