In Berlin–though a U.S. citizen, he’s been based there for the last dozen years–his office had hundreds of media requests from around the globe. We’re a shamelessly celebrity-driven culture, and when we run low on idols from the world of movies or politics, we create new ones. And the instant our latest architect-hero grabbed the big prize, we completely forgot those other guys from the team THINK, who came this close–as the gossip pages like to print–to becoming the winners instead.
Unlike Libeskind’s proposal, the THINK plan wasn’t an early favorite, but the team scheme for two lacy towers gained more and more support. When the seven semifinalist teams unveiled their initial schemes right before Christmas, THINK–a group led by architects Rafael Vinoly and Frederic Schwartz–actually showed three different concepts, initially diluting the impact of their work. In the weeks before the field was narrowed down to two finalists, THINK focused on the idea of dual latticework towers–which they referred to as “infrastructure”–that would be built over the footprints of the Twin Towers. The towers would be 1,600 feet high, have elevators and basic services–and would eventually have cultural facilities built within them, including a memorial park near the top and a museum that linked the two towers at the levels the planes had hit. At the ground level was a vast memorial pool.
Behind the design was a powerful concept. THINK’s scheme put the public amenities and culture front and center on the site, and relegated the development of office towers to the perimeter of the site. Those commercial buildings could be designed by any architect a developer chose, whenever the demand for office space in lower Manhattan jumpstarts the next building boom (don’t hold your breath–some say that’s at least 10 years away). But the site would have an almost instant icon (the two tall structures would take about three years to realize), the terrible void in the skyline would be restored, and the arts centers–with visitors flocking to them–would inject new life back into the depressed neighborhood. This, thought THINK, was the best tribute a design could make to those who died on September 11, and to the future of life in the city. “This is an open-ended project,” Vinoly explained before the final decision was reached. “It calls on the community and a much larger group of people who have a stake in the reconstruction of lower Manhattan. But it is also a kind of global project. It requires input. The design is not so much an architectural piece–what will fill it is the work of many people.”
The concept was so powerful, and the image of those two lacy towers–especially a computer rendering of the pair at night in the skyline with huge beams of light shining toward the heavens–so potent that the scheme became a finalist early last month. Like Studio Libeskind, THINK then went to work modifying its design, according to specific issues that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) asked it to address. First to go was the memorial pool. The two superstructures themselves had to be made lighter–one of them was precariously anchored over the route of the PATH train. The team also removed the cloudlike museum that bridged both towers up high. And it refined the plan on the ground level with far more detail, creating a memorial park and making sure there would be cultural buildings and retail on the street level. The revisions improved an already compelling idea.
The work went on all day, and often for much of the night. Rafael Vinoly’s Tribeca office was THINK’s headquarters: he has an industrial building, and the team used a basement space dubbed “the bat cave” for its work. Vinoly, 58, is a charming, voluble man who has built big projects all over the world (such as the 1996 Tokyo International Forum). His experience would have been key to realizing the demands of the WTC project.
His sidekick, Frederic Schwarz, 50, has a smaller architectural office just a couple of blocks away downtown, but the two only met to form the basis of THINK last summer, after they were both invited to join a design project for the WTC sponsored by The New York Times Magazine. Schwarz once worked with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, groundbreaking thinkers and designers of the ’60s and ’70s. Later, he took over the design of a project they’d shared for the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in lower Manhattan, now nearing completion. Schwarz is a man of great idealism and conviction, whose first pioneering idea after 9-11 was to leave the 16-acre site vacant, and rebuild the 10 million square feet of lost office space on land claimed by decking over the road just west of the site. The other two primary members of the team are the cool landscape architect Ken Smith and Shigeru Ban, a visionary Japanese designer who’s experimented with materials such as cardboard tubing to build housing for earthquake victims in Kobe and refugees in Rwanda.
In the last weeks of the competition, things between Studio Libeskind and THINK got weird. There was a media battle that at times was comical. The New York Times wrote about the chic eyewear of both teams, and devoted an entire article to the Polish-born Libeskind’s Montana cowboy boots. But the lobbying of each competitor also grew intense–they met with victims’ families; they defended their schemes in public forums, on Charlie Rose’s show and to the media. Rumors abounded that one team was trying to undercut the other. On the morning of the final decision, an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal that said Vinoly hadn’t been upfront about two early architectural projects he’d done in the ’70s in Buenos Aires for the ruling junta, a soccer stadium and a television station. In Vinoly’s own words in a recently published monograph, however, he talked openly about those projects, his regrets and his decision to leave a blooming practice in Argentina for New York.
The timing of the article appeared deliberate. But LMDC sources insisted the story–which revealed nothing new–hadn’t affected the ultimate outcome of the competition. Still, the final results were controversial. The LMDC’s own planning committee had recommended the THINK scheme to the broader committee making the final decision. That committee–which included representatives of the Port Authority, the mayor’s and governor’s offices and with Mike Bloomberg and George Pataki personally joining the discussion–overturned the recommendation, largely because of Pataki’s preference for the Libeskind scheme. One source said the committee was divided and couldn’t reach a consensus on the THINK plan; ultimately, those who preferred THINK were willing to go along with Libeskind.
Cynics said the Libeskind scheme would be easier to undermine than the THINK plan: once the memorial park is created in the void against the west slurry wall, the rest of the site in Libeskind’s scheme could be given over to developers. With the THINK plan, the two lacy towers have to be built and they’d dominate the site. Some people suggested that Pataki found the towers too ghostly a reminder of the Twin Towers that toppled.
Pataki hasn’t explained his reasons. The fact is, New York City has a world-class architect in Daniel Libeskind to work on the site design: here’s hoping he actually gets to do the job. But the THINK team is also a remarkable group of professionals whose thinking led to a fascinating and powerful design. The team deserves a huge amount of credit. Even if its scheme won’t get built, THINK’s radical core idea shouldn’t disappear: make the public realm–and the public will–the guiding force in whatever is created on the site. What’s built at Ground Zero shouldn’t merely reflect the forces of politics or real estate.
