Last week Port Authority decided not to hold an opening ceremony for Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub (followed by their sudden flip flop), citing the fact that it was six years delayed and that final construction costs came in around $4 billion in taxpayer dollars, twice what was projected. But it’s hardly the only public project to face delays and skyrocketing costs. In fact, it’s not even close to being the worst of the lot that are draining tax payer dollars. — 6sqft.com
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no doy
Haha nice picture selection.
But This is such b.s. The "starchitect" part of ground zero is a beautiful 300 million station over 3.5 billion of infrastructure and beaurocracy.
In fairness to BIG, their station is supposed to be "cheap" and not really representative of this issue. Its actually almost nice, if not terrible for its location and not fully thought out.
I would say ANY public project is often long delayed and inevitably over budget. Working with the VA, it's almost like they WANT it to be that way....
These projects may be over budget and delayed, but they are the projects that change the future of the industry. These projects keep starchitecture alive. These are the very types of projects that get put into textbooks for future generations of prospective architects to learn about, then idolize...keeping starchitecture alive in perpetuity. Very interesting.
Human life is too short to care about something trivial like money. Go overbudget with no remorse. Who REALLY cares if you go over budget? Tax payers? Psh, an extra $15 of tax a year, gimme break. Far more people will care that a remarkable building is built to invigorate the community rather than some investors going bankrupt or tax payers forking over 0.0003% of their income for the greater good of the city.
The best thing an architect can do is go over budget. Milk the trust funders and blank checks writers for whatever it's worth. A building is always more important than money.
^ I couldn't agree more.
But non-star architect, fast, and cheap projects are? shit. They're complete shit.
Who cares about developers money you ask? not me...but going over budget is not only a matter of excess money's being spent, but a matter of excess resources being spent. The inability to demonstrate an economy of resources while creating inspiring work will likely be seen as a great failure to future generations who are the unfortunate beneficiaries of our degraded planet. They will likely see the starchitecture of today as the death rattle of the consumption era.
^that's what I think when I see the pyramids, or those big heads on easter island. those wasteful ancients, they should have stuck to growing grains and developing written culture!
Difference is the buildings today are not designed to last thousands of years, and the ancients weren't at the same time in history as we are.
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