h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>> But your point has given me an idea of what would be a great way to respond, and that would be to rebuild, but to make the emphasis of the building to be a centre of cultural and religious exchange, to make it a centre of learing and study where the peoples of the world could congregate. Put the largest mosque in the world on sevral floors between the largest synagogue and the largest church. <<<

Stunningly beautiful idea Dibs

>>I am aware of the tai chi/taoist philosophy but planting a park wouldn't necessarily be a way of responding to the attack, but giving in to it. <<

I'm not sure I understand this perspective yet. Is it because it is a park, or is it because it is not rebuilding the thing that was destroyed, that makes people see a park as an admission of defeat.


Dibs, in line with a taoist approach, wouldn't it be the intention that it was done with that would determine whether it was a giving in or not?

And of course the US learning how to yield would go a long way towards healing the damage _it _ has done in the world. It is possible to be non-aggressive _and_ to not be defeated as well.

I feel (and remember this is just my opinion) that it would be giving in because it eradicates the nature of what was there, rather than adapting it. A building was destroyed. Create a park and people will go there, sit, remember the dead, which are all marvellous things. The problem is that it reduces all those lives to be remembered as nothing but the manner of their deaths. There wouldn't be space to move on but only to freeze one horrendous moment in time.

I'm all for remembrance, but there needs to be growth. Any memorial, park, sculpture, whatever, would have the same effect.

I'm not explainig this well, am I?

If a forest is burned down, we should replant, not build on the land and call it the burnt wood estate. Or we shouldn't. We should replant the trees. Same with buildings.

You can look at it from a lot of angles whatever you do:

A memorial could be seen as being mired in the past, or as a promise not to repeat its mistakes.

A new bigger, better WTC could be arrogance, or sweeping things under the carpet, or it could be a positive move forward.

I think the second is probably more appropriate for the USA though.

ok, I'm getting it now. I wasn't really seeing a park as a static memorial. I saw it more as something that would honour what had happened and would change and grow over time so that the kids playing in it in a few generations would know what had happened but it wouldn't be their overriding experience of the place.

I agree that building/planting something that acts solely or mainly as a mausoleum is a bad idea.


>>If a forest is burned down, we should replant, not build on the land and call it the burnt wood estate. Or we shouldn't. We should replant the trees. Same with buildings.<<

hmm, except that trees were burnt down originally to build the city. I'm also thinking of an Ani Difranco song where she sings about the slave cemeteries that NY is built on (literally in the song, but metaphorically too I guess). Maybe the WTC is just another in a line of things that have been there and then been built over.


If my house burnt down I'd want to rebuild it. If my house got arsoned and friends and family died in it, I might want to rebuild my home next door or across the road instead.


I do like your idea of building a building, and changing it's use reflectively.

Fathom

there is no of course about a memorial being a reduction that is just your opinion

"people are less important than making money"
IMO that is what building another office block will say we believe

our society is about more than making money, although that is what the fundamentalists think it is about

the most important thing about western society is that we have the freedom to believe what we choose and to worship who (if anyone) we choose

that is the difference between us and fundamentalism that I'd like to emphasize and building an office block won't do it

Dibs101

That is an excellent idea, and not inappropriate in the centre of a commercial centre
The great cathedrals of the medieval period were all built in the heart of those cities

I think they're making a pretty decent balance between memorial and building for the new WTC. They're preserving the footprints of the towers, and the memorial is going to be lined with trees, with two reflecting pools. It should be park-like. It's also going to include subterranean corridors that will house artifacts and victims' remains in alcoves set aside as shrines.

I haven't been to Ground Zero. I don't have the heart, or the inclination to do so, but I was in Battery Park recently, and they have the shattered sphere sculpture from the old WTC courtyard set up there. It was chilling to see the damage, but amazing to see that it survived at all. I'm glad that they're planning on incorporating it into the memorial.

It's difficult to say what should or shouldn't be done, but it's hard seeing that big hole in the skyline. Your eye is just drawn to it, because you can see what's missing, if you know what I mean. Even the victims' families are divided about what should be done.

Blackberry Cat,

"Fathom

there is no of course about a memorial being a reduction that is just your opinion"

Well obviously it is my opinion. This whole thread is asking for people's opinions: are you suggesting that my opinion is in some way less valid than anyone else's?

I like the idea of a cultural, educational or medical facility in place of the WTC. There is nothing wrong with incorporating a memorial into the design either. All I am suggesting is that there should be MORE than just a memorial. Personally I think the building should be put back to look pretty much like it did before but there's no reason why it should have exactly the same function.

F

Loads of interesting viewpoints. My thoughts hark back to seeing what had been done to the crater left in Lockerbie when the aircraft was bombed out of the sky. It is now a public space that has been landscaped. Many US & UK citizens died there and from what I saw on TV it looked lovely, serene and calm in total contrast to the original scene of devastation. That to me seemed very fitting.

If I died in such a terrible way I think I would like a living useful monument that would benefit the community as a whole such as a university,hospital,library,museum.

Our local monument to the dead of WW1 is a hospital.It has always struck me as a perfect solution to the problem of not downgrading the terrible pointless way in which people died but lifting the memory of their death and sacrifice to a higher level.

Incog.

I very much hope that when the Daniel Libeskind design does go up, it will be one of those cases where everyone's breath will be so taken away as to silence all argument - though only for a few minutes and rightly so. I very much agree with Shea - the balance the new building strikes between remembering and moving on seems very finely judged to me.

http://www.lowermanhattan.info/rebuild/new_design_plans/default.asp

I don't think that, in a city like New York, simply having a memorial is an option, because it would have the effect of freezing time around the site and that's just not in the nature of the city. I think Libeskind has done everything possible to incorporate that into the new building(s), but without letting it become the overriding factor - after all, subtlety is no impediment to remembering: quite the opposite, in fact.

As for function - which seems to be the chief argument here - if the people of New York want hospitals or universities or museums in memory of 9/11, I think that's an excellent idea, but Lower Manhattan would surely be the most impractical part of the city to put any of these: would they have to be located there? It's the business district, after all and the skyline moves to the rhythms of capital (there are eight other skyscrapers going up in the area in the next few years) - whatever function the new buildings are given over to, I'm not convinced that a more humanistic purpose than previously would have the knock-on effect of making the rest of the area less aggressively capitalistic.

(As for a religious function, if the 9/11 terrorists had wanted to destroy a church or a synagogue, then they would have done so - the attacks were on modern secularity, on the perceived un-Godliness of the western world. I very much hope that, in terms of form *and* function, the new buildings will be as unabashedly secular as was the WTC. I've no wish to cause offence, but that's something I feel very strongly about).

Ah, so you don't see capitalism as a Western religion then?

Thanks for the link

That is a good point. If the reason for the attack was because of us being "heretics", then starting to build temples might be a bad idea. Almost giving in to their demands. Although something multi-cultural might be a good idea.

As someone who was raised to think Capitalesim was bad I find this all really fascinating.That kind of ideology is hard to shake ooff ...

Lady Lowena-
What is the Blitz???
Blitzkrieg?

Andrea

Yes .Its what the Londoners called the period of severe bombing the city underwent.Whenever people talk about community spirit and everyone pulling together threy always talk about that.Oddly after 9/11 New Yorkers talked about our courage during the blitz as an example.But of course they could have talked about Beirut or the courage of the Palestenians

I back the idea of a memorial - a hospital seems a particularly good idea...

Fathom

My objection was not to you giving your opinion but to the way you expressed it as if it were a proven fact, to me you seemed to suggest that anyone who disagreed with you had an opinion that was less valid than yours.

Fair enough BC, I shouldn't have got quite so piqued at your response. Sorry.

F