Biggest Eyesore in NYC = One World Trade Center
Posted 11 years ago on Oct. 27, 2013, 1:07 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Tags:
banksy,
9/11,
ground zero
The biggest eyesore in New York is not the graffiti, argues Banksy, its under construction at ground zero.
As a visitor staying in New York for the past few weeks, one thing has become very clear to me, and I say this as a friend - you’ve got to do something about the new World Trade Center.
That building is a disaster. Well no, disasters are interesting. One World Trade Center is a non-event. Its vanilla. It looks like something they would build in Canada.
The attacks of September 11th were an attack on all of us, and we will live out our lives in their shadow. But it’s also how we react to adversity that defines us. And the response?
104 floors of compromise?
Remarkably for such a tall structure, One World Trade lacks any self confidence. How does it stand up without a spine? It looks like it never wanted to be built in the first place.
It reminds you of a really tall kid at a party, awkwardly shifting his shoulders trying not to stand out from the crowd. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a shy skyscraper.
It would be easy to view One World Trade Centre as a betrayal of everyone who lost their lives on September 11th, because it so clearly proclaims the terrorists won. Those 10 men have condemned us to live in a world more mediocre than the one they attacked, rather than be the catalyst for a dazzling new one.
Nobody comes to New York to bathe in your well-mannered common sense. We’re here for the spirit and audacity. Of which One World Trade has none.
Instead you have to look to the rooftops - to the chorus of precariously roller painted names and slogans crawling over the skyline like poison ivy.
This is the city’s true heritage - a city that made its name giving space to the mercurial and the brave.
One World Trade declares the glory days of New York are gone. You really need to put up a better building in front of it right away. Or better still, let the kids with the roller poles finish it off.
Because you currently have under construction a one thousand foot tall sign that reads - New York — we lost our nerve
Read the original post on Better Out Than In
the drone attacks in pakistan are an attack on all of us
Same attackers
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The original WTC buildings were allowed to be ugly--they were also the tallest in the world at the time, and building two of them at once was an audacious move. The current replacement does not get the same Mulligan--we've been building big buildings for awhile, and 'big' doesn't have to mean 'ugly'.
The first WTC replacement design also incorporated wind energy at the top and would've been close to self-sustaining. But the first replacement design didn't survive the review process (there were concerns about lawsuits from ice coming off the windmills). And the new building incorporates 200 feet of concrete shielding on the bottom, which means no light or outdoor views--people might as well be working in a nuclear submarine. And the rest of the building is a ripe target for anybody with an RPG.
We didn't have to end up with a building uglier than Japanese TV's from the 1950's. But Banksy is right--we don't have guts or vision anymore. If this is the best they could do (and btw, it has taken longer to rebuild it than it took us to fight WWI and WWII together), then the architects and the politicos should have stayed the hell home.