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3:33:00 PM EST
Hearing Nothing this very second
Twin Tower Memorials
The finalists for the World Trade Center Memorial are up and ready for your perusal here. I regret to say that none of them really move me at all -- they're all sort of spacey and disembodied and seem to me very much like how a memorial would be designed for an expensive science fiction movie rather than for real-life lower Manhattan, where people live and work and, one terrible day, died.
This isn't a knee-jerk reaction against modern symbolism, since I think that when it's done well, it's tremendously affecting -- the most obvious example of this, of course, is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I just wonder if any of these are done well. There's a certain point at which abstraction loses its connection, particularly when the abstraction is supposed to commemmorate something. I think we're at that point here.
But I could be wrong. What do you think? Does one of these designs work for you? More than one? Tell me what you think.
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The problem: too artsy. It's like the designers came up with some fantastic sculpture then assigned meaning wherever it fit. Most of the memorials involve high walls, enclosed spaces, and sharp corners, not at all comfortable for someone wishing to spend some time there. The only one even offering good places to sit is the "Suspended Memory" memorial. It is not as cold and lonely as the others. It has lovely, open, outdoor spaces. The engraved glass(?) memorials, make it more personal, too.
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Meh, they're all pretty crappy. The only one I kind of like is the one with the duo of square pools, but even those are, as you pointed out, too dang abstract. The Vietnam Mmorial works because it's stark, simple and functional, and leaves no doubt to the viewer as to what it means. This one should be no different.
JH -
None of the memorials is quite what I'm looking for. It's hard to tell from the illustrations; you only see a small part of each. That said, I like the Lower Waters and Suspending Memory memorials the best.
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Let me get this right. That particular memorial involves tons and tons of clear material. (Glass? Plastic? Doesn't matter, really.) That clear material is to be placed out in the open air. In New York.
And its expected to be transparent 10 years from now?
Somebody's going to have to clean that thing. All of it. Up in between those little tubes. Possibly with some frequency.
11/22/03 5:05 PM
TIL was simple, beautiful and iconic. I was in NYC when it was lit up for the first time, and everyone around was awestruck by it. So for me, it is the benchmark to use in evaluating the memorial designs. None of them struck the same balance of simplicity and elegance.