Libeskind embraces purpose of WTC project

Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, September 9, 2006

Daniel Libeskind doesn't know the meaning of "marginalized."

Despite repeated references in the press to the fact that his influence in the remaking of the World Trade Center site has dwindled significantly, the architect preparing to celebrate the completion of his first building in the United States is happy to disagree.

"No, I'm not the architect of these buildings," Libeskind said in a recent phone interview from his New York office at 2 Rector St., a site from which he can see work beginning on the Freedom Tower. "My purview is the master plan."

"It contains an architectural component. I'm not the architect of the Freedom Tower. My vision is not just the aesthetics of a skyscraper. It is to create a memory, and where public spaces should be. (The project) has stayed true to that."

After all, he said: "The fact is that many people can't tell the difference between architecture and master planning."

Libeskind was tapped Feb. 27, 2003, to remake the WTC site, winning out over a proposal by architect Rafael Vinoly. It was the second stab at selecting an architect for the massive, emotionally fraught project. Earlier, six groups had vied for the commission, but when the results were deemed too bland for such a key site, the hunt began again.

Libeskind, who shot to stardom in the 1990s for the angular architecture of his Jewish Museum Berlin, was chosen in 2000 to design a new building for the Denver Art Museum. When the Frederic C. Hamilton Building opens Oct. 7, it will be his first completed project in the country to which Libeskind moved when he was a teenager.

At the time of his selection for the New York project, his winning design called for a cluster of glassy, angled buildings; the 1,776-foot-tall anchor would sport a spire filled with gardens instead of office space. And the plan was to preserve part of the pit that was the foundation of the twin towers for a memorial to those who died there in the terrorist attacks of 1993 and 2001.

Libeskind's design for the centerpiece of the site, the Freedom Tower, was pushed aside when lease-holder Larry Silverstein brought in a different architect (David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill). But Libeskind remains involved in the development, as the person who planned the site.

And planning meetings continue, even though the Lower Downtown Development Corp., the impetus behind the choice of a planner and various architects, is to disband soon.

"It has settled down more and more. We used to meet every day, for hours. Now things are set on course," Libeskind said, noting they had held a meeting that morning.

"The Lower Downtown Development Corp. put the final touches on the master plan. That was their role. All the touches are there. The individual buildings will be built, and everything has been decided. The controversies are over. The vision is there."

But then there is that Freedom Tower. It has shifted from Libeskind's proposal (a slim skyscraper with an off-center spire that recalled the Statue of Liberty) to Childs' more regularly proportioned building redesigned to place it atop a podium for security reasons.

Childs' design still will top out at 1,776 feet, a height Libeskind stressed from Day One as important because of its significance as a year in American history. There, the similarity ends.

"I can't be held responsible for the aesthetics of the Freedom Tower," Libeskind said. "I didn't design it."

"It's not my tower, and I wouldn't have designed it. I regret that building doesn't have the kind of strength, regret that my tower wasn't built. But I had no say in that. The site would have been very different with other architecture."

Perhaps, but designs for the buildings released Thursday in New York show three structures that rely on angular forms in a similar vein as Libeskind's past work.

As New York and the world prepares to mark the fifth anniversary of the destruction of the WTC, Libeskind admitted "the process has not been easy."

"But I am not someone who quits. We all want to see something good. I believe the project at the end will be a very good project. That's my role. I'm sticking to it. Don't we all want to see something good emerge on the site?"

As work on the WTC project began, Libeskind moved his firm to New York from Berlin, where it had been located while the Jewish Museum Berlin building continued for more than a decade of dealing with shifting political scenarios.

From that, he jumped into the WTC tangle, a play whose actors ranged from the governor of New York and the mayor of New York City to the buildings' owner and the man who had leased the space mere weeks before the attack left the Twin Towers a smoking heap.

Starting with the shift in the designers of the site's major building, to complaints about freedom of expression in programming that drove out two arts centers chosen for the complex, the process at times looked more like a boxing match.

"At times it was ugly, difficult and emotional," said Libeskind, who chronicled some of the politics and disappointments in the book Breaking Ground: Adventures in Life and Architecture.

"Perhaps I came to this project naive, but I like the naiveté. If I ever lose that and become one of those cynics, I should close down what I'm doing. I don't want to become a cynic, or a wheeler-dealer."

As things move forward, he has a ringside view of the whole project.

"I can see the column placement, and the memorial is under way. There is a lot of activity. It is visible. Progress is visible. From all the quarreling and ambiguity, we are beginning to see progress. I can see it out of my windows."

Behind the design

Designers of components of the remade World Trade Center site include:

• Master plan: Daniel Libeskind

• Freedom Tower: David Childs of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

• PATH station: Santiago Calatrava

• Tower 2: Lord Norman Foster

• Tower 3: Lord Richard Rogers

• Tower 4: Fumihiko Maki

• Memorial: Michael Arad and Peter Walker

• Cultural center: (Joyce Theater and Signature Theatre Company): Frank Gehry

Chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2677