good bye public planning process. the taking of snohetta at ground zero 1, 2, 3
Governor Bars Freedom Center at Ground Zero
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: September 29, 2005
After a summer of furious and steadily rising criticism, Gov. George E. Pataki evicted the proposed International Freedom Center museum yesterday from its place next to the World Trade Center memorial site. With that, the museum declared itself to be out of business.
"The I.F.C. cannot be located on the memorial quadrant," Mr. Pataki said in a statement. That quadrant, at the southwest corner of the trade center site, contains the footprints of the twin towers.
The Freedom Center, picked for the memorial site by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, was envisioned as a living memorial in which the story of Sept. 11, 2001, would be told in the context of the worldwide struggle for freedom through the ages.
Critics said the sacred precinct of the memorial was no place for a lesson in geopolitics or social history, particularly when a separate memorial museum devoted solely to 9/11 was being planned entirely underground, within the trade center foundations.
"There remains too much opposition, too much controversy over the programming of the I.F.C., and we must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial," the governor said in a statement released at 4:55 p.m.
He said he had instructed the development corporation, which is overseeing the development of the memorial and cultural buildings, to "work with the I.F.C. to explore other locations."
But 42 minutes later, the center said in its own statement that there was no other location to explore, since the memorial quadrant was "the site for which the I.F.C. was created, at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's request, and as an integral part of Daniel Libeskind's master site plan."
"We do not believe there is a viable alternative place for the I.F.C. at the World Trade Center site," said the statement from the center's executives, Tom A. Bernstein, Peter W. Kunhardt and Richard J. Tofel. "We consider our work, therefore, to have been brought to an end."
Debra Burlingame, who led the opposition to the Freedom Center, beginning with an article in The Wall Street Journal, "The Great Ground Zero Heist," on June 9, congratulated Governor Pataki on his decision. Her brother, Charles F. Burlingame III, was the pilot of the airliner that was crashed into the Pentagon.
"The International Freedom Center was an obstacle not simply for the families, the first responders and all those who were personally affected by the events of Sept. 11," Ms. Burlingame said in a telephone interview, "but for all Americans who will be coming to the World Trade Center memorial to hear the story of 9/11 and that story only.
"And I believe that story will be able to convey all the core values that Governor Pataki so eloquently enunciated," Ms. Burlingame said, adding that 9/11 was a story not only of loss but "an uplifting story of decency triumphing over depravity."
The tumble of events yesterday raises new questions around ground zero: What will go into the cultural building, designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta, on the memorial quadrant? (The Drawing Center, its other designated tenant, is already looking for alternative space.) The governor said the memorial quadrant "will tell the story of Sept. 11," but it is unclear how using the Snohetta building would affect plans for the nearby underground 9/11 museum.
What sort of future awaits the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation board, when its three-year planning process can be undone so quickly by the governor?
And what kind of divisions might emerge at the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation board? Its members include Freedom Center executives and Robert De Niro, whose TriBeCa Film Institute was to have been part of the Freedom Center, as well as Ms. Burlingame and other family members who were opposed to the Freedom Center.
In 2004, the Drawing Center, an established art museum in SoHo, and the Freedom Center, which existed only as an idea, were picked as joint tenants of a cultural building to rise at the edge of the memorial, on Fulton and Greenwich Streets.
After critics expressed concern this summer that there would be anti-American exhibitions and programs in the cultural building, Governor Pataki demanded an "absolute guarantee" that neither institution would do anything "to denigrate America."
Rather than respond directly, the Drawing Center began looking for alternative space. But Mr. Bernstein, the chairman of the Freedom Center, and Paula Grant Berry, its vice chairwoman, pledged in a July 6 letter to the development corporation that their museum would never "be used as a forum for denigrating the country we love."
Criticism only grew. On Aug. 11, John C. Whitehead, the chairman of the corporation, instructed the Freedom Center to submit a report on its plans and programs, saying that its tenancy in the Snohetta building was at risk.
That report, issued last Thursday, did not assuage opponents, including three Republican congressmen, the police officers' and firefighters' unions and, as of last weekend, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York.
Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is identified strongly with the events of 9/11 and it immediate aftermath, supported Mr. Pataki's decision yesterday. "The governor has made the right decision," he said.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who had recalled the importance of the planning process whenever he was asked to comment this summer, issued a brief statement. "Although I understand Governor Pataki's decision," he said, "I am disappointed that we were not able to find a way to reconcile the freedoms we hold so dear with the sanctity of the site."
In retrospect, the fate of the Freedom Center may have been sealed three years ago with the decision to create a clearly defined parallelogram, bordered by four streets, in which both the memorial and a cultural complex were to sit. Since this was the site of the twin towers, it may have been inevitable that the block would be seen as hallowed.
Gretchen Dykstra, the president of the memorial foundation, which will build and own the memorial and cultural buildings, said the governor had now "provided clear direction that the memorial quadrant should be devoted to telling the story of Sept. 11th."
Governor Pataki issued his statement yesterday shortly after returning from a trip abroad. "Freedom should unify us," he said. "This center has not."
But the center's executives said they were "profoundly sorry" to see this "significant blow to the idea of a living memorial that emerged from a comprehensive public process" and the "loss of a museum of freedom at the place where freedom was so brutally challenged."
Pataki Solution on Museum Flies in Face of Planning
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: September 29, 2005
OBVIOUSLY, Gov. George E. Pataki got more than he bargained for 15 months ago when he announced that the Freedom Center museum would be one of four cultural tenants at the World Trade Center site.
But in another sense, he and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg got exactly what they bargained for. The Freedom Center that Mr. Pataki evicted from its site yesterday emerged from a planning process going back three years.
A growing number of critics - whom Mr. Pataki was trying to mollify - contended that the center would take away space that could be used for a museum devoted solely to 9/11 and that it would detract from the solemnity of the memorial by focusing on geopolitics and on national and international social history. But the notion of a freedom museum was one of the earliest elements considered for ground zero.
And it was one the governor endorsed.
In an April 2002 blueprint for downtown, the development corporation said one possibility was "a new museum dedicated to American freedom, tolerance and the values that the World Trade Center represented," referring to a proposal by Tom A. Bernstein, the president of Chelsea Piers, and Peter W. Kunhardt, a documentary filmmaker.
Three months later, the development corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey noted the plan for the Museum of Freedom and Remembrance in their preliminary urban design study for the trade center site.
In June 2003, the corporation invited cultural proposals for ground zero. It encouraged those who had already come up with ideas - like a museum that would interpret the terrorist attacks "within the context of freedom, democracy and the history of New York" - to submit them formally. Mr. Bernstein and Mr. Kunhardt did so.
As it evaluated these submissions, in February 2004, the corporation listed some "possible and desirable" uses of the cultural buildings adjacent to the memorial site:
"Civic organizations that would create humanities programs and conduct forums drawing from cultural and academic resources in the region, building an identity for the World Trade Center site as a place for inquiry and discussion."
"International programming allowing for the exploration of issues and traditions around the world, both secular and religious" that "could highlight the values of tolerance, diversity and understanding among nations."
A committee drawn from the corporation, the city's Department of Cultural Affairs and the state's Council on the Arts reached a consensus in June 2004 on the prospective tenants: the Freedom Center, as the museum was then called; the Drawing Center; the Signature Theater Company; and the Joyce Theater Foundation.
AT the time, the Freedom Center said it would feature exhibits in collaboration with the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience - including the Gulag Museum at Perm-36 in Perm, Russia, and the District Six Museum in Cape Town - among others. It also said it would develop lectures, films and other programs "in partnership with leading arts, cultural, media and academic institutions."
Governor Pataki himself described the center in a Nov. 22, 2004, speech.
"The Freedom Center has formed a committee of outstanding individuals to create vibrant content on the global quest for what our own Declaration of Independence deems the inalienable rights of humanity," the governor said.
Linking the opening of the Freedom Center in 2009 to the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth and the 80th anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the governor said: "The Freedom Center will unveil a major exhibit that explores the birth, rearing and maturation of liberty in America.
"The Freedom Center will also convey stories of courage and inspiration like those of Amchok Thubten, a Tibetan monk, and Yousif Hasan, a Sudanese citizen, two brave men who fled to America after peaceful political protest subjected them to years of brutal imprisonment in their own countries."
Of the four cultural institutions chosen for ground zero, only the Freedom Center secured seats on the board of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which will build and own the memorial and cultural buildings. Paula Grant Berry, the center's vice chairwoman, was named to the board in December 2004 and Mr. Bernstein in April 2005.
The point of this timeline is to suggest that Mr. Pataki's decision to evict the Freedom Center flies in the face of a long planning process, a point that the mayor has acknowledged.
Perhaps the result will be salutary. It is not hard to imagine the cultural building in the memorial quadrant, now emptied of the Freedom Center and the Drawing Center (which is looking for alternative space), serving usefully as an extension of the underground memorial museum devoted to 9/11.
Now the question is what else in the master plan is open for revision. If ground zero is too hallowed for a freedom museum, how much longer will a performing arts center be considered appropriate? Or a million square feet of retail space? Or four office towers? Especially if one of them is named Freedom.
Ground Zero Building, It's Back to Drawing Board
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: October 3, 2005
The practice of recycling buildings goes back millennia. But the World Trade Center project may claim a new distinction by recycling a structure that has not yet been built.
The Norwegian firm Snohetta was chosen last October to design the cultural building at ground zero to house the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center.
Because Gov. George E. Pataki evicted the Freedom Center last week as too controversial, and the Drawing Center is looking for space elsewhere, state officials say that the "Snohetta building" will instead be used in conjunction with the underground memorial nearby, to tell the story of 9/11.
The building was custom designed for its original tenants, however, and it is unclear how much the new version will resemble the renderings that have been in the public eye since May.
"Of course, we'll be engaging in a design process to be sure the building meets the needs of its new program," said Stefan Pryor, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is overseeing cultural and memorial planning at the trade center site. "But its appearance - especially in terms of the signature elements - will be substantially similar. And the building will remain spectacular."
It will be at least 30 percent smaller than the 250,000-square-foot design that was unveiled five months ago, Mr. Pryor said. He said it was too early to tell which signature elements would survive: the broad entry ramp, the way the building seems to float over the plaza, the prismatic facade studded with glass, the light court at the center.
The executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Fredric M. Bell, put in a word for the ascending ramp. He said it would connect an appropriately "skyward-pointing" element to the largely underground memorial complex.
Others despaired of salvaging anything from the project.
"The beautiful Snohetta-designed building is now a relic - a design without a program or a purpose," Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, said on Thursday, in the letter she wrote resigning from the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation to protest the Freedom Center's eviction. Her comment carries particular weight, since Ms. Gund was a member of the panel that chose Snohetta.
Monica Iken, another board member of the foundation, which will build and own the memorial and cultural buildings, said in an e-mail message, "There is no reason from a cost or time standpoint that they could not reconsider the look and location of that building."
Ms. Iken said the architects should determine how many visitors can be expected, then account for 9/11 artifacts like the twin tower columns, stored in Hangar 17 at Kennedy Airport.
Ms. Iken, whose husband, Michael Iken, was killed on Sept. 11, 2001, said the Snohetta building was "beautiful in some ways." But she said, "It blocks the views of the memorial and important sight lines and vistas that would help tie the whole area together."
In addition, Ms. Iken said, planners should consider moving the cultural building to the corner of West and Liberty Streets, where it was shown in an early version of Michael Arad's design for the memorial.
There seems to be no chance of that, however.
The building belongs at the northeast corner of the memorial quadrant in part because it will house the visitors center, Mr. Pryor said, and most visitors will approach from that direction. It also was placed there, he said, because the architect Daniel Libeskind called for it in his master plan as a buffer between the memorial and the city. At that location, the building will also serve the unglamorous but essential role of containing, and effectively hiding, the huge ventilation shafts from the PATH terminal.
"Our desire," said Craig Dykers, a founding partner of Snohetta, "has always been to create a building that respects the memorial setting, protects it from its immediate urban surroundings and provides a place where visitors to and from this important location can find a place of transition. This will remain the case whatever institution remains present in the building."
And Snohetta remains on contract with the development corporation.
"The L.M.D.C. have stated clearly to us that they are dedicated to building a life-affirming, interactive and invigorating facility," Mr. Dykers said on Friday in an e-mail message, "and we therefore remain committed to proceeding."
Board Chairman John Whitehead, a Pataki appointee, said the panel won't be effective ``unless we are seen by others as having the necessary authority to make decisions.'' Whitehead and other members called on Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to reaffirm the agency's power over the rebuilding process.
The board went public with its anger at Pataki eight days after the governor cut short the panel's reappraisal of plans for an International Freedom Center in a cultural building to be built at Ground Zero. On Sept. 28, Pataki announced the museum ``cannot be located on the memorial quadrant'' of the site. Museum organizers, who had faced months of opposition from some families of Sept. 11 victims, called it quits.
Had Pataki held off, the board would have taken up the museum's fate at its meeting today, after museum planners had a chance to present their side at two public forums.
`There's no question that the LMDC has been deeply wounded,'' said Roland Betts, another Pataki appointee, during this morning's meeting. ``We need to call upon the governor and the mayor to reaffirm their commitment to this institution, to reaffirm its role in the planning process and to assure us in a meaningful way that the efforts of that planning will not be wasted and will be respected.''
`Name-Calling'
Betts is partners with Tom Bernstein, the freedom center's co-founder, in Chelsea Piers, a Manhattan recreational complex. Both are friends with President George W. Bush.
A Pataki spokeswoman, Joanna Rose, said she would need to consult the governor before responding. A spokeswoman for Bloomberg, Jennifer Falk, said the mayor would release a statement in response later today.
In a rare moment for the board, which usually approves resolutions proposed by its staff with little to no comment, all 10 members spoke with varying degrees of criticism of the process that killed the freedom center. Only one, Robert Harding, the last member appointed by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, said he favored the outcome, though he denounced the ``vitriolic name-calling'' that preceded it.
Board members said some freedom center opponents, asserting the museum would be forum for anti-American messages, besmirched the patriotism of Bernstein and other supporters.
Bernstein Defended
``A groundswell of rumor and innuendo was applied to what the IFC intended to do, which had no basis in fact whatsoever,'' Betts said. ``And we as a board let that get out of hand. The ad hominem attacks on Tom Bernstein were so inappropriate and so unfair. I've been Tom's partner for 25 years, and there's nobody who's more patriotic. Tom's only interest was serving his country.''
In the June 8 Wall Street Journal essay that sparked the ``Take Back the Memorial'' movement, author Debra Burlingame criticized Bernstein for his leadership of Human Rights First, of which he has been president for the last 12 years.
``The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld,'' the U.S. secretary of defense, ``on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan,'' wrote Burlingame, whose brother was a pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
She said that Bernstein had filled the freedom center's advisory panel with ``a who's who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world.''
`Too Much Opposition'
A call to Burlingame today wasn't immediately returned.
The criticisms were picked up in newspaper editorials, on radio talk shows and on Web sites. When Pataki blocked the project, he said there was ``too much opposition, too much controversy.''
Whitehead, former co-chair of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a deputy secretary of state in the Reagan administration, ordered the freedom center in August to present a plan to assure that its exhibits and programs wouldn't mar the sanctity of the memorial. The center released that document on Sept. 22.
``Regrettable and dangerous rhetoric was thrown about irresponsibly,'' Whitehead said today.
Members of the Take Back the Memorial coalition who attended the meeting said the criticisms were misplaced. Charles Wolf, a Sept. 11 widower, alluded to Pataki's support in his announcement for finding an alternate site for the museum, either elsewhere on Ground Zero outside the memorial section, or just off the site, a position that many family members supported.
``The IFC didn't want that,'' he said. ``They pulled their own plug.''
The mayor, who also appoints members of the development corporation, is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP. Bloomberg said after the freedom center's demise that ``although I understand Governor Pataki's decision, I am disappointed that we were not able to find a way to reconcile the freedoms we hold so dear with the sanctity of the site.''
To contact the reporter on this story:
David M. Levitt in New York at dlevitt@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: October 6, 2005 14:37 EDT
|
- bill 10-03-2005 7:55 pm
Governor Bars Freedom Center at Ground Zero
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: September 29, 2005
After a summer of furious and steadily rising criticism, Gov. George E. Pataki evicted the proposed International Freedom Center museum yesterday from its place next to the World Trade Center memorial site. With that, the museum declared itself to be out of business.
"The I.F.C. cannot be located on the memorial quadrant," Mr. Pataki said in a statement. That quadrant, at the southwest corner of the trade center site, contains the footprints of the twin towers.
The Freedom Center, picked for the memorial site by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, was envisioned as a living memorial in which the story of Sept. 11, 2001, would be told in the context of the worldwide struggle for freedom through the ages.
Critics said the sacred precinct of the memorial was no place for a lesson in geopolitics or social history, particularly when a separate memorial museum devoted solely to 9/11 was being planned entirely underground, within the trade center foundations.
"There remains too much opposition, too much controversy over the programming of the I.F.C., and we must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial," the governor said in a statement released at 4:55 p.m.
He said he had instructed the development corporation, which is overseeing the development of the memorial and cultural buildings, to "work with the I.F.C. to explore other locations."
But 42 minutes later, the center said in its own statement that there was no other location to explore, since the memorial quadrant was "the site for which the I.F.C. was created, at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's request, and as an integral part of Daniel Libeskind's master site plan."
"We do not believe there is a viable alternative place for the I.F.C. at the World Trade Center site," said the statement from the center's executives, Tom A. Bernstein, Peter W. Kunhardt and Richard J. Tofel. "We consider our work, therefore, to have been brought to an end."
Debra Burlingame, who led the opposition to the Freedom Center, beginning with an article in The Wall Street Journal, "The Great Ground Zero Heist," on June 9, congratulated Governor Pataki on his decision. Her brother, Charles F. Burlingame III, was the pilot of the airliner that was crashed into the Pentagon.
"The International Freedom Center was an obstacle not simply for the families, the first responders and all those who were personally affected by the events of Sept. 11," Ms. Burlingame said in a telephone interview, "but for all Americans who will be coming to the World Trade Center memorial to hear the story of 9/11 and that story only.
"And I believe that story will be able to convey all the core values that Governor Pataki so eloquently enunciated," Ms. Burlingame said, adding that 9/11 was a story not only of loss but "an uplifting story of decency triumphing over depravity."
The tumble of events yesterday raises new questions around ground zero: What will go into the cultural building, designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta, on the memorial quadrant? (The Drawing Center, its other designated tenant, is already looking for alternative space.) The governor said the memorial quadrant "will tell the story of Sept. 11," but it is unclear how using the Snohetta building would affect plans for the nearby underground 9/11 museum.
What sort of future awaits the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation board, when its three-year planning process can be undone so quickly by the governor?
And what kind of divisions might emerge at the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation board? Its members include Freedom Center executives and Robert De Niro, whose TriBeCa Film Institute was to have been part of the Freedom Center, as well as Ms. Burlingame and other family members who were opposed to the Freedom Center.
In 2004, the Drawing Center, an established art museum in SoHo, and the Freedom Center, which existed only as an idea, were picked as joint tenants of a cultural building to rise at the edge of the memorial, on Fulton and Greenwich Streets.
After critics expressed concern this summer that there would be anti-American exhibitions and programs in the cultural building, Governor Pataki demanded an "absolute guarantee" that neither institution would do anything "to denigrate America."
Rather than respond directly, the Drawing Center began looking for alternative space. But Mr. Bernstein, the chairman of the Freedom Center, and Paula Grant Berry, its vice chairwoman, pledged in a July 6 letter to the development corporation that their museum would never "be used as a forum for denigrating the country we love."
Criticism only grew. On Aug. 11, John C. Whitehead, the chairman of the corporation, instructed the Freedom Center to submit a report on its plans and programs, saying that its tenancy in the Snohetta building was at risk.
That report, issued last Thursday, did not assuage opponents, including three Republican congressmen, the police officers' and firefighters' unions and, as of last weekend, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York.
Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is identified strongly with the events of 9/11 and it immediate aftermath, supported Mr. Pataki's decision yesterday. "The governor has made the right decision," he said.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who had recalled the importance of the planning process whenever he was asked to comment this summer, issued a brief statement. "Although I understand Governor Pataki's decision," he said, "I am disappointed that we were not able to find a way to reconcile the freedoms we hold so dear with the sanctity of the site."
In retrospect, the fate of the Freedom Center may have been sealed three years ago with the decision to create a clearly defined parallelogram, bordered by four streets, in which both the memorial and a cultural complex were to sit. Since this was the site of the twin towers, it may have been inevitable that the block would be seen as hallowed.
Gretchen Dykstra, the president of the memorial foundation, which will build and own the memorial and cultural buildings, said the governor had now "provided clear direction that the memorial quadrant should be devoted to telling the story of Sept. 11th."
Governor Pataki issued his statement yesterday shortly after returning from a trip abroad. "Freedom should unify us," he said. "This center has not."
But the center's executives said they were "profoundly sorry" to see this "significant blow to the idea of a living memorial that emerged from a comprehensive public process" and the "loss of a museum of freedom at the place where freedom was so brutally challenged."
- bill 10-03-2005 8:26 pm [add a comment]
Pataki Solution on Museum Flies in Face of Planning
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: September 29, 2005
OBVIOUSLY, Gov. George E. Pataki got more than he bargained for 15 months ago when he announced that the Freedom Center museum would be one of four cultural tenants at the World Trade Center site.
But in another sense, he and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg got exactly what they bargained for. The Freedom Center that Mr. Pataki evicted from its site yesterday emerged from a planning process going back three years.
A growing number of critics - whom Mr. Pataki was trying to mollify - contended that the center would take away space that could be used for a museum devoted solely to 9/11 and that it would detract from the solemnity of the memorial by focusing on geopolitics and on national and international social history. But the notion of a freedom museum was one of the earliest elements considered for ground zero.
And it was one the governor endorsed.
In an April 2002 blueprint for downtown, the development corporation said one possibility was "a new museum dedicated to American freedom, tolerance and the values that the World Trade Center represented," referring to a proposal by Tom A. Bernstein, the president of Chelsea Piers, and Peter W. Kunhardt, a documentary filmmaker.
Three months later, the development corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey noted the plan for the Museum of Freedom and Remembrance in their preliminary urban design study for the trade center site.
In June 2003, the corporation invited cultural proposals for ground zero. It encouraged those who had already come up with ideas - like a museum that would interpret the terrorist attacks "within the context of freedom, democracy and the history of New York" - to submit them formally. Mr. Bernstein and Mr. Kunhardt did so.
As it evaluated these submissions, in February 2004, the corporation listed some "possible and desirable" uses of the cultural buildings adjacent to the memorial site:
"Civic organizations that would create humanities programs and conduct forums drawing from cultural and academic resources in the region, building an identity for the World Trade Center site as a place for inquiry and discussion."
"International programming allowing for the exploration of issues and traditions around the world, both secular and religious" that "could highlight the values of tolerance, diversity and understanding among nations."
A committee drawn from the corporation, the city's Department of Cultural Affairs and the state's Council on the Arts reached a consensus in June 2004 on the prospective tenants: the Freedom Center, as the museum was then called; the Drawing Center; the Signature Theater Company; and the Joyce Theater Foundation.
AT the time, the Freedom Center said it would feature exhibits in collaboration with the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience - including the Gulag Museum at Perm-36 in Perm, Russia, and the District Six Museum in Cape Town - among others. It also said it would develop lectures, films and other programs "in partnership with leading arts, cultural, media and academic institutions."
Governor Pataki himself described the center in a Nov. 22, 2004, speech.
"The Freedom Center has formed a committee of outstanding individuals to create vibrant content on the global quest for what our own Declaration of Independence deems the inalienable rights of humanity," the governor said.
Linking the opening of the Freedom Center in 2009 to the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth and the 80th anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the governor said: "The Freedom Center will unveil a major exhibit that explores the birth, rearing and maturation of liberty in America.
"The Freedom Center will also convey stories of courage and inspiration like those of Amchok Thubten, a Tibetan monk, and Yousif Hasan, a Sudanese citizen, two brave men who fled to America after peaceful political protest subjected them to years of brutal imprisonment in their own countries."
Of the four cultural institutions chosen for ground zero, only the Freedom Center secured seats on the board of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which will build and own the memorial and cultural buildings. Paula Grant Berry, the center's vice chairwoman, was named to the board in December 2004 and Mr. Bernstein in April 2005.
The point of this timeline is to suggest that Mr. Pataki's decision to evict the Freedom Center flies in the face of a long planning process, a point that the mayor has acknowledged.
Perhaps the result will be salutary. It is not hard to imagine the cultural building in the memorial quadrant, now emptied of the Freedom Center and the Drawing Center (which is looking for alternative space), serving usefully as an extension of the underground memorial museum devoted to 9/11.
Now the question is what else in the master plan is open for revision. If ground zero is too hallowed for a freedom museum, how much longer will a performing arts center be considered appropriate? Or a million square feet of retail space? Or four office towers? Especially if one of them is named Freedom.
- bill 10-03-2005 8:29 pm [add a comment]
Ground Zero Building, It's Back to Drawing Board
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: October 3, 2005
The practice of recycling buildings goes back millennia. But the World Trade Center project may claim a new distinction by recycling a structure that has not yet been built.
The Norwegian firm Snohetta was chosen last October to design the cultural building at ground zero to house the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center.
Because Gov. George E. Pataki evicted the Freedom Center last week as too controversial, and the Drawing Center is looking for space elsewhere, state officials say that the "Snohetta building" will instead be used in conjunction with the underground memorial nearby, to tell the story of 9/11.
The building was custom designed for its original tenants, however, and it is unclear how much the new version will resemble the renderings that have been in the public eye since May.
"Of course, we'll be engaging in a design process to be sure the building meets the needs of its new program," said Stefan Pryor, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is overseeing cultural and memorial planning at the trade center site. "But its appearance - especially in terms of the signature elements - will be substantially similar. And the building will remain spectacular."
It will be at least 30 percent smaller than the 250,000-square-foot design that was unveiled five months ago, Mr. Pryor said. He said it was too early to tell which signature elements would survive: the broad entry ramp, the way the building seems to float over the plaza, the prismatic facade studded with glass, the light court at the center.
The executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Fredric M. Bell, put in a word for the ascending ramp. He said it would connect an appropriately "skyward-pointing" element to the largely underground memorial complex.
Others despaired of salvaging anything from the project.
"The beautiful Snohetta-designed building is now a relic - a design without a program or a purpose," Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, said on Thursday, in the letter she wrote resigning from the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation to protest the Freedom Center's eviction. Her comment carries particular weight, since Ms. Gund was a member of the panel that chose Snohetta.
Monica Iken, another board member of the foundation, which will build and own the memorial and cultural buildings, said in an e-mail message, "There is no reason from a cost or time standpoint that they could not reconsider the look and location of that building."
Ms. Iken said the architects should determine how many visitors can be expected, then account for 9/11 artifacts like the twin tower columns, stored in Hangar 17 at Kennedy Airport.
Ms. Iken, whose husband, Michael Iken, was killed on Sept. 11, 2001, said the Snohetta building was "beautiful in some ways." But she said, "It blocks the views of the memorial and important sight lines and vistas that would help tie the whole area together."
In addition, Ms. Iken said, planners should consider moving the cultural building to the corner of West and Liberty Streets, where it was shown in an early version of Michael Arad's design for the memorial.
There seems to be no chance of that, however.
The building belongs at the northeast corner of the memorial quadrant in part because it will house the visitors center, Mr. Pryor said, and most visitors will approach from that direction. It also was placed there, he said, because the architect Daniel Libeskind called for it in his master plan as a buffer between the memorial and the city. At that location, the building will also serve the unglamorous but essential role of containing, and effectively hiding, the huge ventilation shafts from the PATH terminal.
"Our desire," said Craig Dykers, a founding partner of Snohetta, "has always been to create a building that respects the memorial setting, protects it from its immediate urban surroundings and provides a place where visitors to and from this important location can find a place of transition. This will remain the case whatever institution remains present in the building."
And Snohetta remains on contract with the development corporation.
"The L.M.D.C. have stated clearly to us that they are dedicated to building a life-affirming, interactive and invigorating facility," Mr. Dykers said on Friday in an e-mail message, "and we therefore remain committed to proceeding."
- bill 10-03-2005 8:32 pm [add a comment]
- bill 10-11-2005 4:52 pm [add a comment]