(no subject)

[jfb]

There's a bunch of stuff in the Times this week about the 9/11 memorial design proposals, and other 9/11 topics.

The most interesting to me: practical concerns about the designs.

In Oklahoma City, 18 months were spent evaluating the type of glass used to make the 168 empty chairs that are the centerpiece of the memorial to the victims of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The detailed engineering studies led to a change in the recipe for the glass, to keep it from cracking in sudden swings of temperature. The glass, so far, has held up. But the grass around it has not. So many people have visited the memorial that ropes have been hung to keep the crowds away from the chairs, contrary to the designer's intent.

There's more of that sort of thing.

Thomas Keenan writes that the designs "are relentlessly numerical, devoted perhaps first of all to the project of counting, measuring and listing" and comments on the comforts and risks of that approach.

The LMDC has provided computer animations of all the proposed designs. James Sanders reviews the history of architectural rendering and speculates a little on the future.

I don't read Maureen Dowd, but the pull quote from her piece mirrors my cursory reaction to the designs: They do too much to make an ugly memory pretty.

A long article on the EPA's management of air safety in the days following the atrocity.

Out-of-towners like me may not be aware that the WTC PATH station has reopened.

Comments

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

We drove past the Big Hole In the Ground en route to visiting wrog's college friend from Brooklyn on Saturday. And I got quite sad, more than I expected I would. Though the Big Hole was not nearly as big as we sort of envisioned it would be. But I was rather put off by the cardboard signs with a drawing of the two towers and an American flag in the background that were stuck onto some of the signposts in the neighborhood and on the fence that surrounded the Big Hole. It seems there has to be a way to honor the dead without being, well, crass about it. And I hope they can find one.

[jfb.livejournal.com]

I thought about going when I was in New York, but I couldn't think of a reason that I would respect myself for--whatever desire I had to see it just seemed like morbid curiosity. Instead of going to see a piece of New York that had died violently, I spent my whole visit celebrating how alive the rest of it was. It felt right.

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Well, we didn't drive by it specifically to see it, but because it's on the simplest route between the Holland and Battery tunnels. If I'd known we were gong to go by it before we did, I might have asked if there was another way we could go. Last time we were in the area we did avoid going by (though we got lost and took a huge detour), and I was glad we had.