Architecture: World Trade Center: Time-lapse vid on WTC's rebuild and Memorial

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I really disliked the way the 9/11 Atrocity at the World Trade Center, New York City, that occured 10 years back, was, via its rebuilding and institution of the 9/11 Memorial, turned into TV hucksterism.  I   don't like some of the architectural design of the new World Trade Center buildings (but won't pause to elaborate here).  Instead, I want to underscore how the TV treatment was so shallow, inadvertantly exposing the motive of the hoopla for the buildings!  Remember the architects (one of whom appeared absolutely obscene in self-congratulating himself); he was shilling to rent his office spaces and by TV publicity increase their monetary value and perhaps his own income.

I especially condemn the self-styled objective newsman, Shepherd Smith, on FoxNews for becoming a salesman of office spaces.  Smith was so nakedly conflating patriotism, martyrdom, and the need to sell rooms — a single package to his decrepit mind.  Just capitalism's propagandist and nothing more!

On the other hand, I liked very much YouTube's time-lapse video on the building of the Memorial.  It deconstructs Smith's conflation, separates out the patriotism and martyrdom, to give us an engaging view of the raw building.  We can enjoy -- whether we have a patriotic interest and/or a respect for the martyrs, or not — the sheer construction of the site.  We supply the patriotism and respect / grief / mourning; the video sticks to the building and architecture.  In this video, they're not selling us anything. They're not trying to increase the monetary value of the offices they want to rent.

Update:  Of course, here I'm not really focused on the architecture of the Memorial area as such (I haven't been there).  But via a social-media message from NY Review of Books, I came across this pithy, poignant item:

"In Martin Filler’s view, the National September 11 Memorial in New York City is “the most powerful example of commemorative design since Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial.”

"I wept, but about what precisely I cannot say. Much to my amazement, I visited Michael Arad’s National September 11 Memorial in New York City to find that it impressed me at once as a sobering, disturbing, heartbreaking, and overwhelming masterpiece."



— Archibald

But here's another FoxNews offering, true reportage, and worth reading in full.

Technology - SCITECH

After 9/11: How to Build a Safer Skyscraper

By Maxim Lott

Published September 11, 2011

FoxNews

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AP

The World Cultural Center, a finalist among proposed design plans for the World Trade Center site, featured a skybridge -- one of several modern concessions to safety following 9/11..

The 9/11 attacks threw the architectural world into shock. “The age of skyscrapers is at an end,” city planner Howard Kunstler declared just after the tragedy, and Donald Trump reduced the height of a planned tower in Chicago, citing security concerns raised by 9/11. 

Read more .... click the t+mstamp below