The World Trade Center/ Ground Zero/ Reflecting Absence: A Critical Analysis of a Space.
Construction began on The World Trade Centre, New York in 1966, and was completed in 1973. As well as the signature ‘twin towers’, there were 5 other buildings forming a 16 acre complex. It was only during construction that the decision was taken to make the towers, One and Two World Trade Centre the tallest buildings in the world, rising to 1,368 and 1,362 feet, over 100 feet taller than another famous New York landmark, the Empire State Building. Interestingly, the man who ran the company that built the Empire State Building (in just 18 months, a record never surpassed) Bill Starrett, described the task as “the nearest peace time equivalent of war” . Little did he realise their destruction would mark the beginning of a new kind of war. The architect chosen to undertake the design of the complex was Minoru Yamasaki, who said of the project,
“The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man’s dedication to world peace… The World Trade Center should, because of it’s importance, become a representation of man’s belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness.”
As well as a symbol of dedication to ‘world peace’, the Trade Center, and in particular it’s twin towers, were perhaps the defining image of the famous New York Skyline of the second half of the 20th Century, which in turn was itself a symbol of Modernity and of American wealth and egotism. In the twin towers we have a prime example of buildings used as a way of ‘signing’ the city. This is clearly shown through the medium of T.V. where countless soaps and dramas (Friends, Sex and the City etc..) use a brief clip of ‘that’ skyline just to remind the audience where the action is taking place. Nothing else is required, as those buildings say ‘New York’ as clearly as the words themselves. These buildings are the selling point of a city (like many others) that has become a commodity, the subject of marketing strategies and a huge enterprise in it’s own right. A strange play on this idea of buildings as selling point is that in the case of the World Trade Centre, this was also its literal function, a place of buying and selling, of trade.
The fact then, that in September 2001, these buildings should be the focus of the largest act of terrorism in recent US history seems quite incredible. These buildings were etched into the memory, and were certainly more than just buildings. As one architect put it,
“The skyscraper targets in New York City were prominent symbols of our civilization, buildings of American invention that all over the world expressed the spirit of a will to soar above the earth in creations of steel, concrete and glass. The terrorists chose very carefully. They discerned those skyscrapers as the cathedrals of our age and aimed at their heart.”
Clearly, for some people they did not represent the dedication to world peace their architect had intended, perhaps the polar opposite was symbolised for many – US Imperialism, greed and obscene wealth. After their destruction however, perhaps all they now represent is the futility and vulnerability of showing off. Yet for many, the destruction of skyscrapers such as these would not have come as a surprise, in fact it could have been seen as inevitable. One of the most common reactions of people to the T.V news footage of the planes crashing and the buildings billowing smoke, was that they thought it was just another action film. Skyscrapers have been falling in the imagination for over a hundred years.
Cities have always been vehicles for deep fear, whether it be the threat of aliens, destruction or mass death. (There are too many films to mention that deal with all of these, at least one or two new ones a year it seems, but my personal favourite is Invasion of The Body Snatchers.) The whole genre of Animée is a way of showing the city through the adolescent, and it’s fascination with/fear of destruction. The element of Threat that seems to pervade notions of the city is not unfounded. The modern city has been, since at least World War II, above all else a military target. When one recalls the horrors of Hiroshima, it is no wonder the city holds such a strong sense of menace and peril. Even before this, the city has always been bound up with ideas of violence and revolution, so much so that Paris was redesigned by Haussemann to try and prevent any further insurrection.
But despite all this, ‘the draw of the city’ still holds sway. Why live in a city at all if it is such a fearful existence, if the sense of threat is so strong? There is undoubtedly a certain ‘romance’ of this unknown. The city exerts a pull of desire; it is a space of desire. There is a sense of the city as Utopia, (or rather, Dystopia) where you can find anything and everything you want, where you can be anybody and everybody you want. The buildings themselves act as a mere backdrop to this multiplicity, they are often ignored, rarely ‘really’ seen. Walter Benjamin wrote,
“Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction. The laws of its reception are most instructive.”
There is a duality, again represented by the skyscraper – touching and being touched, seeing and being seen. The city is dominated by flows of traffic, which the city dweller can slip in and out of, in a kind of ‘functional ecstasy’. Perhaps it is this that attracts so many people; after all, the line is thinly drawn between excitement and terror.
The aftermath of the events of September 11th 2001 blew this sense of fear right into the open, and took the reception of buildings and architecture away from mere distraction, and into the ‘spotlight’ with the creation of Ground Zero. Ideas of the ‘void’ have always been bound up with fear, the fear of the unknown. There has always been a fear of ‘falling into the abyss’. The city represents a liminal space, on the very threshold of this gulf, where the boundaries between the safe and the unsafe, the known and the unknown have become blurred. Baudelaire often speaks of such things, things of modernity in his poetry,
“Alas! Everything is an abyss – actions, desire, dreams,
Words! And over my hair which stands upright
I often feel the wind of Fear pass.”
But Ground Zero is a new space, created by an event, not for one, a void of huge proportions, a gaping hole 16 acres across, and over 70 feet deep. Clearing and then filling this void was always going to have be done as quickly as possible, the recovery crews were working twelve hour shifts, such was the sense of urgency. At its worst, in its earliest hours and days, it was a gaping crater, a glaring monument to uncertainty, and the fragility of life. Yet even the tragic things, perhaps more so than normal, attract attention, pull people toward them, and in the case of Ground Zero, a bizarre kind of sight-seeing arose, Disaster Tourism.
The decision was taken to hold a competition for the building of a memorial on the site of the World Trade Center. The mission statement for the project included the following points, which had to taken into consideration by the entrants:
Remember and honour the thousands of innocent men, woman and children murdered by terrorists.
Respect this place made sacred through tragic loss.
May the lives remembered, the deeds recognised, and the spirit reawakened be eternal beacons, which reaffirm respect for life, strengthen our resolve to preserve freedom, and inspire an end to hatred ignorance and intolerance.
All this from a building is truly a monumental task, in every sense of the word. To try and reconstruct, without destroying what was symbolised by the absence that had been created. The chosen design for the first building to rise out of the Ground Zero site is the ‘Freedom Tower’, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, whose projects in Berlin, especially his extension to the German Museum (known as the Jewish Museum) also dealt with the difficulty of representing a ‘lost population’, (those who died in WWII, especially during the Holocaust) and the presence of memory. The rest of the site is to be turned into a memorial, called ‘Reflecting Absence’, and designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker.
The idea of the building as memorial is not a new one, but in the case of the World Trade Center, the lack of a building, the emptiness, was itself a monument to what had happened. This element is to be incorporated into the building of a ‘new’ memorial. The ‘footprints’ of the twin towers are to preserved, and used as containers for recessed pools of water, which will quite literally, reflect the absence and loss of lives and buildings. The whole design forms part of a plaza, or square – a space of unity. The ‘square’ has a long history as a space; in twelfth and thirteenth century Italy the piazza was more or less the only safe space in the city or town, and ever since has been a meeting point, and a space of leisure and social interaction.
All that has been written about the new designs, and what should be done with the space has, of course, been unashamedly patriotic. This also goes for the design of the Freedom Tower. Its very name enforcing the value that America places on (her own) freedom. But it does not stop there; the tower is to reach exactly 1776 feet, the figure itself a tribute to the year of the American Declaration of Independence, and is intended to represent the durability of democracy. The tower will be part of a dramatic new ‘signature’ of the city skyline, one that will presumably read, “We cannot be defeated”, or similar. It is a part of a new kind of building, an architecture of defiance and memorial, a strange combination of a desire to rebuild and to leave alone. Another key feature of the plans for the Ground Zero site is the use of light. In his plans for the area, Libeskind stated that at the exact time that the twin towers were hit, and then collapsed (8:46am and 10:28am) the surrounding plaza area is to be unshaded by surrounding buildings, providing a focal point and reminder. It is perhaps here that his deconstructionalist methods are most apparent. The most vivid reminder and memorial is not something to be built, but left unbuilt. Empty spaces have a way of becoming zones of multiple possibility, where memory begins to show itself. It will act as a functional void, with an affecting quality disproportionate to it’s architectural form, yet it should show far better and more clearly what needs to be shown, what escapes literal translation, than any built structure could. It is perhaps the only way of representing the ‘unrepresentability’ of catastrophe.
In the case of Ground Zero then, we have a space that is at once temporary and yet permanent. The area itself is to be rebuilt, but it has been indelibly written into the mind and memory of anyone who was alive in 2001. It will doubtless be recorded in history forever. The Times newspaper described September 11th 2001 as “the day that changed history”. Images and real time footage of the events of that day have been repeated endlessly since the very hour it happened. The New York City skyline has now taken on a new, more ‘affected’ symbolism – it is a place where something tragic happened, where something else used to stand. If the city is an ‘image event’, then the image has changed forever. The footage of the partial destruction of Lower Manhattan has been used to justify a war on terror, and an American President’s entire term in office has been (and will be) based on the consequences. The city’s façade, its décor, have ceased to be just those things, and have taken on an active quality of their own. In the words of Libeskind himself,
“In refuting the past and future alike, the eternal present of transformation and metamorphosis must be incorporated in an urban framework which encourages the creation of unpredictable, flexible and hybrid architectures.”
As for the site as a whole, its history no doubt reaches further back than 1966, when construction began on the World Trade Center, and it’s future will no doubt extend further than the new Freedom Tower. As for its present, this is not fully analyzable either, as it is in a constant state of change, and of flux. It was a disaster zone; within a few months (if not already) it will be a building site once more. Yet the politics of memory may mean that this is one site, one space that will be able to resist the erasure of history, by history. Libeskind may have found a way to ‘mend’ the city, without erasing the memory and history of its people.
