Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 21:23:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC Rebuilding #459:Reactions to FT...React to Cuozzo! Yesterday I forwarded the article from the Times, today the Post has weighed in on the FT redesign: http://nypost.com/news/regionalnews/its_freedom_in_a_new_light_regionalnews_tom_topousis________and_david_seifman.htm As has the Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/431025p-363267c.html Note that the Post article claims that the FT has an outdoor observation deck at "a height of 1,368 feet,exactly as high as the tallest of the Twin Towers",while both articles imply the spire rises from a base at 1,372 feet high. ACTUALLY,the FT is primed to reach a roof height at 1,362 feet, the height of the SHORTER of the Twin Towers,which had an observation platform at 1,374 feet.With the higher height-to-floor ratio the FT likely has a lower indoor observation deck as well (both separated from the roof by three mechanical floors)...what is at 1,368 feet is the parapet,an external structure best compared to the (higher) old platform.The restaurant being below the indoor observation deck is likewise CLEARLY lower than Windows on the World (which was only three mechanical floors below the taller tower's roof). I note that recent 3D renderings of the site plan continue to show the remaining towers as much shorter than the FT despite the great heights recently reported by the Wall Street Journal. Also in the Post is a column by Steve Cuozzo,glorifying the FT, which I forward with the comments with which John Lictro forwarded it to me. My objections may be narrower than John's but Cuozzo says some mistaken and/or obnoxious things at the end which really need to be counteracted...I comment after Cuozzo's text. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 06:02:39 -0700 (PDT) From: john D. Lictro Subject: We need to slam Cuozzo Hi Lou, I just read this article from Steve Cuozzo today. I pasted it below for you. It must be slammed. What also must be slammed is his analogy of the "old" WTC to "a pair of old smokestacks". How disgusting, & insulting to those who witnessed these "smokestacks" smoking on 9/11 !!!! Best regards, John D. Lictro AT LAST, A SOARING TRIUMPH June 29, 2006 -- DAVID CHILDS, the Freedom Tower's chief designer, has suavely filled in the blanks of the vague octagonal edifice shown to a disappointed public a year ago. As the great Seagram Building architect Mies van der Rohe said, "God is in the details." The new Freedom Tower is tons better than last summer's blank-faced spire with a fortress at its base. That was merely a rough draft that Childs' Skidmore, Owings & Merrill team had about five minutes to doodle, after the cops and politicians scuttled his magnificent earlier design. Childs did all he could to humanize a strained compromise wrung from the incompatible demands of reclaiming the skyline with a structure both commercially viable and virtually bomb-proof. The blast-resistant base is no longer a cube, but 14 feet shorter than it is wide - enough to soften its original neo-fascist geometry. It hardly resembles the bunker everyone feared, thanks to an exterior clad entirely in prismatic glass. Vast entryways will invite the public in on all four sides. Block-long front stoops will invite strollers to relax and take in the passing scene. Allaying fears that the redesign would pinch pennies, this Freedom Tower will not be done on the cheap. Instead of reflective curtain-wall glass that makes most office buildings look hostile, it will use more expensive, mostly-transparent glass like the widely praised new 7 World Trade Center's. Strips of stainless steel will define and differentiate eight soaring triangular planes. The rooftop antenna mast, crusted with "leaves" like an asparagus spear, will be lit from within and crowned with horizontal beacons. Architectural purists will still hate this Freedom Tower. But it clobbers the banal and clunky Twin Towers, even if those who want them back won't like it any more than the eggheads will. The old World Trade Center had one thing going for it: identical twin behemoths, even boxy and clunky ones, lent the lower Manhattan skyline a two-thumbs-up optimism no single structure can replicate. But the Freedom Tower is to be followed by at least three more lofty office buildings at Ground Zero, to be designed by great architects Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki. All favor striking departures in forms and facades. The Freedom Tower's tautly controlled, octagonal-triangular tango begs them to go wild. When - and if - the job is ever finished, the first WTC will seem as quaint as a pair of old smokestacks. steve.cuozzo@nypost.com __________________________________________________ Well...Cuozzo singles out those who want the Twin Towers back for his opposition.My criteria for "rebuilding" demands the former scale without necessarily the former silhouette...but the "smokestacks" reference is,as John says,highly insensitive. And Cuozzo forgets that the additional towers planned by the Libescheme are not "more lofty",but all smaller than the FT, all a greater retreat from the necessary scale. Further,he loves the idea of their not appearing to be of the same general style,which is a necessity if they are to make a unified architectural statement...which even he admits only an identical set can make! If the other towers WERE at least as tall as the FT I could accept them,but they are smaller than buildings on surrounding blocks,shards contrived to emphasize the terrorists' craters. THIS PLAN MUST BE SLAMMED! letters@nypost.com is where to write for publication, his own email (in the column) will get you nothing (at least he has never replied to me and his views on those who see reclaiming the former scale as a must are clear). Pataki was gloating today about the US Government having expressed interest in taking 600,000 square feet of FT space...and I am sure they would be just as interested in a better building. -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.