New New York

Search terms: freedom tower + Ground Zero

Last week, the designs for the final three towers on the World Trade Centre site were unveiled and the response from bloggers was predictably mixed. While amonggiants.blogspot.com decided he liked the designs – “kind of futuristic, crystalline, if you will” – www.tropolism.com concluded: “We knew the ‘Freedom’ Tower was going to be a snorefest, but we thought Foster, Rogers and Maki would kick up the architectural refinement on The Site. We were wrong.”

Maki and the architectural lords can console themselves with the fact that such comments are par for the course for the Ground Zero site, which is a constant source of fascination in the blogosphere. Indeed, the Freedom Tower may well be the only unbuilt building to have not only its own myspace account but a blog, written by the Freedom Blogger, at thefreedomtower.com.

Quoting the New York Sun, the Freedom Blogger suggests that the height of the first tower, designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, could still come up short of the 1776 ft planned in celebration of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. “What kind of PR can you get from a tower that falls short of the level that every patriot in America has dreamed of for the past five years now?” he complains.

amonggiants.blogspot.com disagreed: “Smaller and perhaps (dare I say it) quieter could very well be more respectful to one of America’s most trying times and the thousands of innocents who were murdered.”

The height of the tower also occupied the thoughts of a chat forum at www.urbanplanet.org. BHCav took a slightly more cynical view than the all-American Freedom Blogger: “They should make it 2020 ft tall, because at this rate that is when it will be completed.”

This sentiment was echoed by Tamias6: “Two thousand feet tall, 1776 ft tall or three inches tall – at this point I don’t really care any more. With all the politicking and bickering and still seeing that giant hole in the ground five years after 9/11, I’d be happy as a sloped hog to see something – anything – built on that site, even a McDonald’s.”

On the same forum, Dan326 alluded to the other symbolic significance of the tower’s height: “If they want to make the world’s tallest building, they should make another building, “ reiterating amonggiants’ problem with “the part of the American psyche that says: they knocked ‘em down? Well, we’re just going to build them bigger!”

While others were worrying about the height of the tower, lynnbecker.com was more concerned with what was going on at ground level. “Childs’ claims that the glass facade will somehow disguise the fact that the building’s base is an oppressive 187-foot high, windowless concrete bunker.” I’m sure he didn’t phrase it quite like that, Lynn, but you would forgive him for beginning to sound defensive …