Peter Maass explores how the recent mosque proposed for a grubby downtown street in NYC has become more of a symbol than its opponents ever intended.
Peter Maass explores how the recent mosque proposed for a grubby downtown street in NYC has become more of a symbol than its opponents ever intended. NY Magazine
He writes,
Many others see it as a provocation. The upshot is that in a city with more than its share of famous buildings, one that doesn’t even exist has already become iconic. It is a modern alchemy of symbols in which the act of destruction doubles as an act of creation. The thing is, the opponents of the community center appear to have failed to understand the double-edged consequences of the preemptive iconoclasm they are trying to achieve.
2 Comments
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2010/08/16/girl-hanged-on-a-tree-in-honor-killing
I think I understand what the article means by an architectural icon, but I believe the writer is too loose with his definition and misreads Mitchell's take on the Twins Towers.
I think what Michell was getting at on about the Twin Towers now an icon for the 9-11 terror attack is that that the towers are now a SUBSTITUTE for that attack, similar in structure to how the Eiffel Tower substitutes for France, or at least Paris.
ICONS are not instant, and need consensus like agreeing the stars and stripes substitute for the USA; Union Jack for Britain; etc.
A mosque is mosque and this one doesn't and wouldn't hold that degree of symbolic weight to be called an ICON or represent Islam in NYC.
IMO the NY magazine piece was just journalistic hyperbole.
eric chavkin
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