Quote:
Originally Posted by brian.odonnell20
why is there this overwhelming desire for a spiral effect? better yet, why does there have to be all of this thought and meaning behind every single goddam aspect of this site? is it such a huge surprise that this architectural vision that completely disregards many practical financial issues got bogged down by reality...?
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Precisely what got bogged down? In and of itself, the much-discussed spiral effect really doesn't factor in comparison to the actual consideration of what to build. OTOH, I can see a problem vis a vis the actual extrapolation of a vision to its real-time construction and the tons of feasibility issues that surely go with it.
Indeed, many truly grand and innovative concepts have withered on their vines owing to a variety of local and national issues and the person(s) who decide(s) them. Too often, as we all know, many a proposal's death knell was tolled as the result of a planning/city council's vote that critics thereof could and
did have a field day taking apart. NIMBYism is equally guilty as charged.
But my post's overall theme revolves around the fact that thousands of people had their lives taken from them in many horrible ways by a foreign enemy that the President of our country swears at every inauguration ceremony to defend against (BTW, never mind that W. was in office at the time. Would Mr. Gore have been able to prevent the same thing had the Florida clusterfutz gone his way?).
The psychologically harrowing nature of the attack on our native soil had to be answered by an immediate and tangible healing process as well as one from within. By glaringly obvious necessity, replacement of that which was lost was non-negotiable ("with bigger size and more security than ever before", as the rallying cry went); and whether we like it or not, symbolism is the hardwired driving force in our species that invariably realizes this goal.
None of the plans that ever came out were released without consideration of the myriad of human-generated, real-world circumstances that everyone
knew would invariably maneuver themselves into play ...and we all know about these. And it's a pretty good cinch that neither the initial Libeskind design nor the tyrannically oversized Lord Foster entry were exactly tantamount to divinely etched tablets that a pair of clueless narcissists stood on a mountaintop wielding like the Stanley Cup after a 7th game shootout and told Bloomberg at al. to build or else.
On the contrary, both "starchitects" simply attempted to perform the only thing they were called upon to do: create a monument that in their eyes inspires to betterment and does so in a way that bestirs the viewer to turn that inspiration to acts that benefit fellow man and society and blah blah blah... But as first-time contributors to the New York City sociopolitical environment, neither Mr. Libeskind nor Lord Foster could legitimately have been expected to foresee the ultimate real-world realities that even today continue to shape their original plans.
And is all this not also true with the majority of grand-scale projects anywhere in the world, and often for reasons of lesser gravity? How many cities with, for instance, successful Olympic bids had majestic plans--not necessarily vertical in scope, mind you--cut down to size or altogether annihilated
because of simple reality? But just the same, the
human propensity to attach symbolic meaning to
human events obtained.
Apropos of Nine Eleven, symbolism is the most appropriate catalyst for long-term reclamation, both on the corporate and personal scale. The singularly unique experiences that this event insinuated upon us all that day should remain as object lessons in how the gamut of human states of mind and basic human drives (i.e. economic and financial stability) in combination can practically work miracles.