Taken out of its high-profile context, the BIG design for Two World Trade Center initially appears to be a graduate school placeholder: here are the initial seven blocks of program, with a light dusting of foliage on the exposed step-backs. The internet's critical reaction to the renderings released to WIRED has been heated: it's the New Museum without the ingenuity, it's a brilliant melding of memorial gravitas and client-driven-design, it's nothing but spoon-fed media hype taken to a 1,300 foot extreme. Of course, this is a building that can't be taken out of its context, not only in terms of being a new icon of Manhattan, but also because it is something of a sequel: its unabashed boxiness and new media savvy presentation clashes with Foster + Partners' previous svelte, slanted diamond-topped design. A little more than 24 hours after the renderings were released, we've rounded up the most compelling critical and forum-based reaction:
In Vanity Fair, Paul Goldberger confronts the controversial release of the renderings and glossy PR video to WIRED as opposed to an traditional architectural publication, noting "who could fail to be seduced by a tour through a magical glass tower?" However, he soon sets aside the smoke of BIG's media-savviness and gets into the substance of the actual design. "Ingels started out not with some notion of an iconic shape that would stick in our minds, but by translating the company’s space needs into a series of boxes of different floor sizes. The boxes get smaller as the building rises, but also wider, and Ingels stacked them so that on the north side each box projects out a little farther than the one below, while on the east side the boxes step back in the manner of a classic 1920s office building, with large roof terraces on each setback. The in-and-out stuff is restricted to these two sides. The south and west sides, which face the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, rise straight up, addressing the memorial with more dignity and quiet, and helping to enclose the space around it." He ultimately gives a conditional thumbs-up to the design: "The building overall is a lively composition, but quieter than you would expect from Ingels (who, with English architect Thomas Heatherwick, is designing Google’s new headquarters) and more responsive to what is around it."
BIG's renderings also prompted a review of the history of stacked box designs, most of which were never built. On Twitter, New York magazine critic Justin Davidson noted that "BIG's WTC 2 has echoes of REM [Koolhaas]'s much more interesting (never built) 23rd Street Tower." This line of thinking was continued on the Archinect forums, where quondam.com compiled a visual history of (nearly built) stacked box architecture, starting with Arquitectonica's proposed Capital Park West (1983). "I know H&dM's NYC luxury hi-rise currently [is] under construction, but that's a bit more voxelation than stacked-box, and there's, of course, the New Museum, but that's not really a skyscraper."
BIG's proposed step-back gardens, which will encapsulate the range of biomes from the arctic to the tropics, have both charmed and alarmed people. As Evan Chakroff noted, "I do question the utility of the roof terraces at 1000+ feet. How can these possibly be usable without massive wind baffles or, worse, a glass enclosure? The 'vertical village' concept is commendable, but it's a pretty old idea; how many times has the 'vertical city' been attempted? Sky-gardens just can't reproduce street-level activity because there's no connectivity." CD.Arch, meanwhile, came out in favor of the ingenuity behind the gardens. "My favorite part is that each terrace is a different biome [which uses] a rather repetitive idea and add[s] a slight twist."
Archinect forum regular Lightperson describes BIG's mixture of the restrained south and west faces and the louder east and north faces as the equivalent of an architectural mullet: "Business up front, party in the back. I guess it depends on if you like mullets."
30 Comments
LEAVE BJARKE ALLOOOONNEEEEEE!!!!!!
Mullet.
Tennesee Waterfall.
Bunk bed
(Sorry, archinect, I won't get in between you and your true love).
Adios muchachos, see you later! RIP Architecture, long live PR!!!!!!
I like the design. To me it invokes the stair climbs of the rescue workers of 9/11 and in another more fundamental sense, the ascent of the innocent souls of 9/11 to heaven.
To have the skyline of NYC to commemorate the heroism and sacrifice of 9/11 is very fulfilling, comforting thought. I hope the building gets built as designed.
On 9/11 my brother, Capt. William F. Burke, Jr., FDNY gave his life.
Stairway to Heaven
Not my PoV, just another metaphor to toss around.
and a dusting off of the ideas of Hugh Ferris
http://www.marhi.ru/AMIT/2008/4kvart08/Lobos/smLobos_fig02.jpg
+++mullet, lightperson nailed it. lol
IT IS DIFFERENT!
like a mullet... .it is different
tinker toys.....that is my opinion.
Funny how the rendering has an image of 1 WTC reflected off the curtain walls - almost seems lime some gesture to David Childs.
David Childs should be dropped from AIA. When will he grow up, and stop going behind the closed doors and stealing the projects?
for me Foster's option was more interesting, especially in panoramic view. BIG's building just a box... 7 boxes, but it might have an original ideas inside. Terraces are going to be used for 3 months in a year..
Ouch..
the big one-man show, high-handed show, horizontally vertically ?! There's more to it than that the draft '' fits better ''.
It's just about money!!!! Not architectural quality. One can not help but to laugh somehow ironically, just from sheer amazement. An incredibly banal, cheap design on such a prominent place.
if you commit to lease the upper floors…you can have a …
... oversized red bratwurst... on top of the building, design “BIG”.
Is AIA so impotent that they cannot even close the doors on Childs? Why shouldn't other architects go behind the doors to obtain projects the way he DID? Is anyone at AIA reading these comments??
I think it looks great. I realize that its become fashionable on this site to bash BIG, but the work continues to speak for itself.
To me, the stepping back seems to allude to the history of tall urban buildings and setbacks while the directional repetition seems to suggest motion and trajectory in the way that some Balla paintings do or the sculptures of Peter Jansen.
@davvid
Already in the 80s, a sharp Discussion was waged against the "Decorated Diagram" of modernity. Back then thundered against the followers of Mies and Gropius and their apparent triviality.
That apparently it can get worse, proves BIG’s pictogram. Note: make a stupid form, and because no one can understand it, explain it with pictures. Because indeed they understand people without any architectural knowledge. The target group is clearly defined.
Rapha,
I don't understand what you're saying.
BIG's buildings aren't stupid or hard to understand. Images, models, diagrams, drawings do help to explain a building. Thats nothing new.
If BIG's buildings appeal to people outside the world of architecture, isn't that a good thing?
davvid,
it's not the complexity of the design...lol on the contrary for me BIG is a world of Pictograms based on a striking effect of everything sparkles a la Ikea. The naive one-dimensionality of Poparchitecture for Popjournalism.
Maximum irrelevance ... big is not big ... but maximum as desired ... Any stacked volume ... length times width times money ... not inovativ.
There's a big difference between the profiles of the 30's-40's era skyscrapers, which step back in response to the zoning envelope, but always in a way that has structural logic, and BIG's proposal, in my opinion. This building is pretty clearly a shifted-stacked-box assemblage, which is all the rage now (New Museum, the OMA residental tower in Rotterdam, etc.). It's using hidden structure to produce a form which conveys a message that it's a stack of boxes or blocks, but blown up to super-scale...each one slightly shifted from another. Such a thing is only structurally rational if the boxes are small and self supporting, like children's blocks, or perhaps steel shipping containers. Blown up to the scale of a super-tall building, it's fictive, and a bit unsettling in my opinion.
In a related observation, I question the symbolism of proposing a tall building on this site that looks from certain angles like its leaning or falling over. Bad metaphor for Ground Zero.
I like Bjarke Ingels. I met him in Copenhagen, where he spoke to a design conference which I attended. He's really an engaging guy. I was impressed with his articulate presentation of his ideas, and the clarity of his explanation. I think his design approach is very optimistic, and in that way is typically Danish. Instead of pursuing some opaque, abstract design agenda, I think he is trying to design buildings that make people's lives better, and I admire him for that. I often question whether he has fully thought through the implications of his "whiz-bang" formalism, and whether he is actually achieving the humanism he says he is pursuing. This project is a good example of why I am skeptical.
Rapha and EKE,
I don't see anything in this design that can be considered "pop" or "whiz-bang". Look at this design without knowing that it was designed by BIG. Look at it without thinking of how charming and optimistic Bjarke Ingles is. Just judge the work. Is it purely rational? Probably not. Its it unserious? No. Its a fairly subtle manipulation of a common building form. And it doesn't appear to be falling over.
I did judge the work. I disagree with you.
The sky gardens are not intended to replace street presence and activity, rather, they are intended to enhance the experience at the upper levels. These are not inexpensive gestures; they are expensive and a sure plus for surprise and delight.
since 1916 no one has realized the potential of the NYC zoning code unit noW!
Chili, have you ever stepped out onto a balcony at 1,000 feet?
Once did a project at Miami of Ohio, you could design anything you wanted so long as it was Georgian Architecture with red brick and cream colored trim paint... just visited the 9/11 site and they must have a similar campus architect... you can design whatever you want so long as you only use two materials, glass & aluminum.... becoming a house of mirrors. Suppose it’s easy to clean, but then you would need to define “easy”.
Optimism - that's what is great about Bjarke and is lacking in the highly skeptical post big recession era - Bjarke brings about the "lets suspend the critical headspace" and go for it. look at the architecture of the mid 1930s to 40s, the Moderne-ists if you will, proposed a new future then - the Norman Bel Geddes Futurama at the 1939 New York Worlds fair
Lets give it a go this time
Minus the freeways and cars of course - as of late, Bjarke does seem to be pulling ideas out of history books and trying to update them - that may not be a bad idea provided the articulation works
Actually i shouldn't care as a non american... and stick with the Walter towers in Prague.
W wie Walter is so optimist, dynamic, honest... and eloquent.
"Minus the freeways and cars of course - as of late, Bjarke does seem to be pulling ideas out of history books and trying to update them - that may not be a bad idea provided the articulation works"
The problem is that he's not going back far enough. :)
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