The World Trade Center Debate - 2 Contributions:
No Surprises ::
Will a Humanist Approach Help?
Opinion: by Taeho Paik
The LMDC is suggesting that it is looking at six viable options for the redevelopment of the former WTC site. I’ve just seen pictures of two options courtesy of “The Economist” web site. The two alternatives are too similar for my tastes to be considered as ‘options’ and remind me too much of the late eighties "Gordon Gecko quick-buck" massing models. LMDC is playing coy and it is vague on details about development parameters. Now the US doesn’t easily believe in the sacredness of places, certainly not in the urban context. It does consider certain places as being ‘significant’ but the events of September 11th also challenge American urbanity in another respect; how to treat its wounds.
Culturally I daresay that the horror of September 11th effectively ends that uncertain post-Vietnam period in the US, marked by an inner struggle with its own failures of the Cold War. After WWII, the US took on responsibilities, which always ran the risk of putting the political exigencies of international leadership at crossroads with the innate sense of individual liberty which characterised life at home if only for being the very raison d’etre of its constitution. It confused things further by selling its new international role to its citizens as a matter of national duty in defending that precious liberty and their constitutional rights. This obviously implied that the ability to live according to their rules was ‘threatened’ by certain malicious neighbours. Thus the American mindscape mapped out the world on the basis of friends and foes. Evident successive failures to impose its will on Korea, Cuba and Vietnam eventually resulted in the collapse of political integrity at home and found expression in the manner of the demise of the Nixon presidency.
Life obviously went on and contemporary America does not live by the same presumptions which took it to Korea and Vietnam, but it continues to pose challenges to the international order. It appears that the new enmities allegedly responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11th are related to the unresolved after-effects of the Gulf War. The assumption that the defence of American liberty will not hurt those at home was completely shattered on September 11th, and the threats of enemy attacks, always somewhat illusory, as imagined during the Cold War, has taken on a reality in a cruder but much more fearfully tangible form.
In so much as it seems to take one tragedy to exorcise another, September 11th will always be a poignant moment to remember innocent victims. All nations can name them. For America and for New York the WTC site offers
opportunities to consecrate their recent tragic experiences of international
conflict and move on by re-evaluating its place in the world. However, in wanting to create a meaningful monument, it must first of all do some homework. The first step is not to dream up illusory architectural schemes but to write a proper brief. The work for the architects is still a long way off.
America must still come to terms with the historical context of what the event
represents. What is the new war that it has triggered and how can American
idealism continue to be sustained in its aftermath? Of what must WTC represent
to Americans and New Yorkers of the future? Can New York continue to live by
commercial rules alone after witnessing such terrible destruction or has it
learned that urban icons can also carry explicit political messages?
In being uncertain about the future and the meaning of contemporary life, to what can we turn for guidance? To a Humanist who believes that it is always the past that must guide the future, the answer is
more obvious but what can we say to our contemporaries who are still caught in the spiritual maelstrom that the Cartesian mechanistic world view has created? To be sure there must be a new role for philosophers. To be sure the world cannot keep on allowing its resources to be gobbled up at the current pace. Mechanical solutions do not provide the answers, rather, they exacerbate the problems. We need new concepts, new life supporting paradigms, to think anew what civilisation means. However, a modicum of research is all that is necessary to see that much relevant thinking was already done
for us some 2,000 years ago. It’s just that the core and the details of these lessons have been forgotten. We only remember the most superficial aspects and think that even these, we thought them up in the last ten years.
To the Greek and Roman civilisations, architecture was regarded as one of the primary forms of communication along with speech and writing. It was regarded as an inherent part of our emotional, moral and intellectual being. Edifices were used to tell stories, inscribe ideas into human memory and thus marked the eternal reality of the human soul. The difficulty in dealing with how to redevelop the WTC site or knowing how one might want to design a memorial, lies in the
inability to describe adequately, the nature of the event itself. The loss of life was terrible but so was the fact that at the core, the event was largely beyond human comprehension. What was the scope of two
hijacked jet airliners smashing deliberately into an office complex? Could it be reduced to mere ‘terrorism’ or
was it a symptom of a new human sickness? If it was an act of war, to whom can we declare
hostilities in revenge? To whom do we direct the rage for the loss? Why is the enemy so infuriatingly elusive and even ‘abstract’?
Maya Lin’s eerie and tranquil Vietnam War memorial offers a clue as
how to assuage loss as well as incomprehension. It is the modern man’s declaration of faith
inside a society that has taken faith and hope away from its architecture.
However, September 11th is different from mourning the sad losses of soldiers fallen without glory. It appeared to bring the nation together. I would wish the writers of the brief for the WTC redevelopment would resist the temptation to be glib. I would wish that in this moment of uncertainty that they ask to be reminded of the founding principles of the Republic. I would wish that they asked for the faith, hope, charity and the idealism of America’s founding fathers to be written on the walls. I would wish they asked that the knowledge and certainty of American Humanists such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain were evoked.
Considering thus the foundations of the nation and forgetting for
a moment all the things that went awry along the way, would it not be clear that
in the end, a memorial to American sacrifice need really express only one thing?
Which would be that America has suffered, wittingly or unwittingly, in defending
something greater than itself - Civilisation. How can such a memorial be
designed and built? It might well be a task seemingly beyond the capacity of
most current practitioners but I believe I know at least where to find the language of Architecture needed to do it. Like our spoken language, it is ancient so it would take a while and the journey might be tough, but it’s there for anyone who will look for it: inside our souls. There, the keys to the books of civilisation lie, but deep, very deep, in the part where the genealogy of ideas is kept.
Taeho Paik
Roma, 20 July 2002
No Surprises ::
Will a Humanist Approach Help?
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