Lack of freedom of vision, crushed by safety and commerce

On the 12^th anniversary of the 2001 East Coast massacres, I have finally seen One World Trade Center in its completed state.  In my mind, I had envisioned the creations of Daniel Libeskind and his later collaboration with David M. Childs.  A building with immense spires and windmills coasting among clouds in an open-air superstructure.  But I didn’t realise it would be the version, radically revised by Childs, approved for the final time in June 2005, which is deeply uninspiring in comparison to what I expected (though I was under a misapprehension).  The initial twin towers were concrete monoliths, no-frills slabs jutting out into the sky.  They came – eventually – to be a much-loved aspect of the New York skyline but no-one could ever say they were graceful or innovative.  It seems Childs (re-hired) tapped into that ‘70s zeitgeist with a ‘safe’ design, after the epic battles in the years following the destruction of the World Trade Center about what should replace it.

Let’s be clear, it isn’t awful like the Heron Tower (which looks as if the containerised docks at Rotterdam had suddenly materialised in part in the centre of London), it isn’t out of place like the cylindrical monstrosity of Vauxhall Tower (ruining the riverbank of the Thames so some architect can indulge in willy-waving) and it doesn’t melt cars and set fire to outdoor carpets as the Walkie-Talkie AKA Walkie-Scorchie does.  But it could be in Hong Kong or Shanghai, without being a ‘world city’ monument, like Swiss Re (better known as The Gherkin) or The Shard i.e. could be in any city but has a distinctiveness whereby it is immediately adopted by its host city.  The original World Trade Center summed up the brutality and vulgarity of commerce, stripped of any pretensions but there has was an opportunity here to be a fitting monument to those who died in 2011 and reinvigorate the New York skyline but in the end the result went for one level above bland as epitomised by dropping the popular name Freedom Tower for One World Trade Center.