Public = Avant Garde ??

I read a little piece in the Times today con­cern­ing the two final­ists chosen by the LMDC for the World Trade Center, and I have a few reactions.

Let us read some of what Mr. Muschamp writes:

“[Daniel Libeskind’s design] is an emo­tion­ally manip­u­la­tive exer­cise in visual codes.

Alright. Does any ordi­nary user of the World Trade Center — worker, tourist, subway rider, etc. — have any idea just what Mr. Muschamp is talk­ing about? Why has archi­tec­ture become this jar­gony realm of intel­lec­tual nonsense?

I don’t know. The death and destruc­tion of WWI caused a huge shift in West­ern values, specif­i­cally because sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy was employed so suc­cess­fully in the killing of a gen­er­a­tion of men. In the decades after the war, the long-​held ide­al­ized notion that tech­nol­ogy would usher in peace and pros­per­ity was dashed, and many of the pre­vail­ing assump­tions in the arts were also vacated. It was in this void that the Mod­ernists arrived – along with their avant garde aes­thet­ics and their intent to social engineer.

So what has Mod­ernism accom­plished? Well, not much good. We’ve still got the rich and poor, yet we have ugly civic space. For instance, the orig­i­nal WTC was a wind-​swept, anar­chis­tic struc­ture, cut off, and hor­ri­bly out of scale from the sur­round­ing streets and neigh­bor­hood. When you stood in the Plaza look­ing up at the struc­tures, it was dif­fi­cult to feel any­thing but dread. In fact, that seems to be a pre­vail­ing require­ment of the Mod­ernists – your build­ing must impart DREAD. Unless, of course, you are one of the ini­ti­ated. You have to be edu­cated for seven years at MIT to under­stand the beauty of the Bru­tal­ist form.

Anyway, back to Mr. Muschamp:

And… the longer I study Mr. Libeskind’s design, the more it comes to resem­ble the bland­est of all the projects unveiled in the recent design study: the retro vision put forth by the New Urban­ist design­ers Peter­son Lit­ten­berg. Both projects trade on sen­ti­men­tal appeal at the expense of his­tor­i­cal aware­ness. Both offer visions of inno­cence ? nos­tal­gia, actually.

Peter­son Lit­ten­berg is nos­tal­gic for Art Deco Man­hat­tan circa 1928, before the stock market crash caused the United States to aban­don the pre­vail­ing ide­ol­ogy of social Dar­win­ism. Mr. Libeskind’s plan is nos­tal­gic for the world of pre-​Enlightenment Europe, before reli­gion was exiled from the public realm.

This is always the argu­ment of these elite intel­lec­tu­als against clas­si­cism — that some­how, orna­ment, scale, pro­por­tion­al­ity and human­ity are to be despised as Impe­r­ial. Now, obvi­ously both plans are far from Clas­si­cism, but, in the inter­est of democ­racy, why cry his­tori­cism when the alter­na­tive is intel­lec­tu­al­ized ugliness?

The gen­eral public, I believe, longs for dig­nity in public archi­tec­ture. I prefer the Think project, but the lat­tice work looks like Tin­ker­toy, and I find it tacky that they have pods within the lat­tice­work. How intim­i­dat­ing would it be to get in an ele­va­tor, and shoot up 100 floors to a “cultural space”, know­ing full well that there is noth­ing but air and Tin­ker­toy beneath you? Fright­en­ing. The Eiffel Tower it is not.

No doubt what­ever gets built at the WTC site will be very modern, and cutting-​edge. It is my hope that it exem­pli­fies the dig­nity and pur­pose human beings deserve and crave. Let the people choose, not the intellectuals.