|
UNIN-SPIRING Last Updated:1/27/14 at 10:36 AM TTA Open Letter to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat The decision by the Council on Tall Buildings to crown the Freedom Tower “tallest in the land” was not surprising, but, it was, as one New York Magazine commenter noted, decidedly unin-spiring. The reason it matters which tower has the title is that it makes New York look like a pretender. As long as someone standing on top of the Willis Tower can look down on someone standing at the top of the Freedom Tower, we look silly. We are including a link to the New York Times piece, which does a pretty good job of presenting the different viewpoints, but the comments that follow are where the real story is found. It is startling to read that the majority of the comments are scornful of the decision. The Council seems to have managed to insult the public’s intelligence and proclaim its own irrelevance at the same time… To give the crown of tallest-US-tower to the building with the obviously inferior claim made a sad mockery of all that the title is meant to honor. Celebrating a building that is smaller than one Twin Tower as if it is a triumph is deluded. To claim that a building almost a hundred feet shorter than the Willis Tower in Chicago is the tallest building in the hemisphere is pathetic. To pretend that jazzing up the antenna will raise the building’s height to 1776 feet is embarrassing. Deceiving the public and the workers who built this tower is criminal. What really does matter is that a tower claiming to honor the year 1776 is the product of a rebuilding process based on defeating the democratic process and spreading propaganda. The second link below is to a Wall Street Journal piece (subscription) by the always delusional Daniel Libeskind who thinks that the WTC boondoggle has something to teach Washington about reaching consensus. He seems to honestly think they reached a consensus at Ground Zero! But all the WTC proves is that you can do anything to if you have enough money. When the money you are spending belongs to the people you are ignoring, you have nothing to teach Washington. They already have that lesson down pat. World Trade Center Tower Ruled Tallest Building in U.S. Learning From the World Trade Center Wrangles
|
