I have to say, the Libeskind design reminded me of nothing so much as the aftermath of a blast. One website, dedicated to the rebuilding of towers at least as high as before, has called the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), which champions the architect, the “Leave Manhattan Destroyed Committee.”
September 11, 2001 caused me to feel something I never thought I would. More than once in the months that followed, the thought crossed my mind that if my own death could somehow allow it to be possible for 9/11 never to have happened, I would accept such a fate.
When the towers were first built, their scale actually frightened me. Looking at photos of them, I felt they might topple one day, of their own accord. I really thought mankind had not yet progressed to the point where such structures were viable and sustainable.
How right I was on this last point!
After the disaster, there were those who complained that the buildings should have been designed to better withstand such an attack. Nonsense, of course—in fact, I myself was absolutely flabbergasted that these two seemingly fragile, top-heavy glass cases had stopped the planes cold and remained unmoved! But it is true that there should have been guarantees against the towers’ collapse. Not physical, structural ones, but moral-philosophical ones that would have left the subhuman parts of the modern world as powerless to affect human society as bears in the forest. (See Why America Slept by Gerald Posner for details.) There are two things that hold buildings up: the materials and design to deal with the metaphysical dangers, and the government to deal with the man-made ones.
I had never loved the towers; but in the ensuing weeks I started to feel unusual emotions. I was not alone.
Yet consider this: When one guest on Larry King—I forget who—started to haltingly mention how he now looks at photos of the WTC with some of the feelings he has when seeing pictures of his kids, Larry cut him off fast. Apparently many shrink in horror at the idea that one might actually love something so crass and materialistic as modern office towers.
And that is one reason why of all the Ayn Rand quotes that ran through my head at the time, the most frequent was the following:
He thought, you’re my judges and witnesses. You rise, unhindered, above the sagging roofs. You shoot your gracious tension to the stars, out of the slack, the tired, the accidental. The eyes one mile out on the ocean will see none of this and none of this will matter, but you will be the presence and the city. … One can’t escape from you; the streets change, but one looks up and there you stand, unchanged. … It’s you that I’ve betrayed.
—Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
(Edited by Rodney Rawlings on 9/08, 6:04pm)
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