Architect 2014-07.pdf

A Barrier to Fire.
Not Inspiration.
Fire-Rated Aluminum
Window And Door
Systems
Calatrava’s West Concourse of the WTC Transportation Hub
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rough and conspicuously undesigned, from a
balcony at the end of one of the long ramps.
Then, after you walk further downhill, you
reach the hall itself. I spent a long time sitting
on a bench looking up at this powerful object,
something I wish it was possible to do above
ground. In the Foundation Hall, I was
reminded of a meeting I attended years ago
where people came to discuss their responses
to design proposals for the memorial. I
remember listening to a man who had lost his
wife in the attacks. He said that what he was
hoping to find was a design that had the power
of a cathedral, a place where “you don’t have
to think.”
Architecturally and emotionally, the
Foundation Hall is the strongest component
of the museum. It’s a dramatic space, one that
borders on sacred. It could be the place where
you “don’t have to think,” if only the curators
had left out the interactive information
display that is projected on adjacent walls. I
found myself wishing the museum would,
occasionally, pull back on its programming and
give visitors room to simply reflect.
STRANGELY, THOUGH, the most powerful
experience I had during my recent visits to
the WTC was not in the expected places. It
wasn’t at the memorial or in the museum, but
in a newly opened underground passageway
called the West Concourse. All white, with a
dramatically ribbed ceiling, it made me feel as
if I had walked into one of Santiago Calatrava,
FAIA’s renderings of the WTC Transportation
Hub—which, pretty much, I had. The concourse,
connecting the existing temporary commuter
rail station with Brookfield Place (formerly
the World Financial Center) across West Street
from the WTC, is the first bit of Calatravadesigned
space to be completed. While it may
get crowded at rush hour (or next year, when
1 WTC fills up with Condé Nast employees), I
walked through in mid-afternoon and found
it lovely, serene, and slightly spooky. Maybe
because there is something about Calatrava’s
modernism that resurrects the feeling of
Yamasaki’s, it allowed me to sense a connection
to the old WTC that eludes me elsewhere.
The Transportation Hub is notorious for
cost overruns—its $4 billion budget is double
the original projection—and it’s weirdly
impractical (the mechanical systems are
housed in the completed floors of the adjacent,
stalled, 3 WTC). It’s had nothing but bad press
for years. But for the first time in a long time, I
was eagerly anticipating the hub’s full unveiling.
With its Stegosaurus spikes and crazy grandeur,
Calatrava’s station might turn out to be the
transcendent space that the WTC badly needs.
While the architects who designed the
towers dialed down their formalist impulses
in deference to the memorial, Calatrava didn’t.
If anything, he cranked them up. I am starting
to think that Calatrava had it right, that the
commuters who ride the PATH trains back and
forth to New Jersey every day may enjoy the
one place at Ground Zero that possesses some
of the boldness of the old WTC, that has the
audacity to look like New York.
Aluflam USA
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