Is the new Cultural Center at Ground Zero about Culture or Politics

[im10ashus]

And why haven't our two senators been invited to discuss the plans? I honestly prefer an open spaced memorial. More out of fear than anything else. I can't imagine this place is going to be any less a target than pre-9/11.



A Temple of Contemplation and Conflict
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

FOR architects who find inspiration in conflict, ground zero can be perversely fascinating. From the battles over money and security to the nasty political elbowing, all of the ingredients are there.

The strains are evident in the design for a new museum that will house the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center, unveiled yesterday by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The building, by the Norwegian firm Snohetta, is strangely seductive: with some fine-tuning, it could even become a fascinating work. It is already closer to the standard set by Santiago Calatrava's soaring glass-and-steel transportation hub than that of the site's troubled Freedom Tower, for example.

But ultimately, the museum is more about politics than architecture - a theme-park view of American ideals in an alluring wrapper.

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This entry sequence reinforces what's best about the design, the sense that you are traveling along a series of shifting horizontal planes that gently lift you up out of the hurly-burly of the city into the contemplative world of the galleries. It could also be interpreted as a counterpoint - a moment of psychological relief - to the descent into the voids left by the twin towers.



But the experience soon becomes Orwellian. The center's upper-level galleries will be arranged in a spiral around the central light well. Under the current design, visitors will have to ride an elevator to the top and then walk back down along the spiral on a so-called "Freedom Walk." This kind of manipulation seems silly, especially in a museum that celebrates freedom. By echoing the ramps down into the memorial pools, the downward spiral implies a direct connection between the cataclysm of 9/11 and a global struggle for "freedom" - a bit of simplistic propaganda. (An early rendering of the Freedom Center that was circulated at the development corporation's offices included an image of a woman flashing a victory sign after voting in the recent Iraqi elections; that image has been replaced by a photo of Lyndon B. Johnson and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

contd.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/arts/design/20free.html?pagewanted=1