While I don't think it's a great article, there's definitely some parts in there that I found interesting, especially because only two weeks ago I was there. For instance, how should we remember history in an appropriate way? How does the urban form of the area reflect this? I found the memorial to be quite...odd. On the one hand, the holes in the ground and the gigantic waterfall are a good representation of the emptiness that was left behind by 9/11. On the other hand, it's also a park now, with neatly organized patches of grass and well-kept bushes. It seems too normal, if that makes sense. The park does not reflect the destruction aspect at all. It could have been just any park. The only remnant of how Ground Zero was on 9/11 is a column of the original building, which they put in the museum there. To put it differently, the current site felt like a place of awe, a beautiful place, and not a place where I was confronted with the tragedy. Unlike the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, which really conveys the tragedy. According to the creator: And I get that, I felt that when I walked around it without knowing this info beforehand. Ground Zero didn't make me feel all that more connected to the tragedy. The names around the waterfall did make it more tangible and human, but that was about it. Maybe I just have a different idea of treating cultural heritage though.According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.
The video of those guy base jumping was just awesome.
Busted by a Goldman Sachs security guard for illegally jumping off the Freedom Tower. Perfect.