20 Years Later

It's somewhat surreal. To image two decades have past. The area around the World Trade Center has been transformed. I have visited it, several times, over the years, watching the slow transformation of rubble and ruin into memory and action, to landmarks and icons. It has become a place of reverence and rebirth, moments of solemnity coinciding with the active hum of a city reinvigorated. Or was, until a new, faceless calamity came to town. 

As I reflect on my words, written so many years ago, I still feel a resonance with my thoughts at that time. In some respects, the outcomes far exceeded the expectations I had. People returned, and the site has become both a memorial and a civic center, balanced in ways that allow for the continuing of life in the presence of death. 

But the point of reflection is to not only celebrate the things achieved. It is to consider the things outstanding, the challenges still faced. What the past years have taught, and most recently have made quite clear, is that the unity felt in the immediate years after September 11th, only obscured long-standing feelings of division and resentment. And as the threat of a terrorist attack from abroad subsided, a new type of terror has gained a foothold from within. 

Symbols, I believe, still carry power. That they carry with them the histories, memories, and values of  place and people that is both timely and timeless. But the meanings of symbols are not fixed. Their power can be manipulated. And, right now, the power of the American Flag is the symbol I now reflect upon. The values that it now signals to others. There has been much written about the decline of American Democracy, and this ongoing experiment. The cynic in me finds it hard to ignore the prognostications of downfall and defeat. After all, there seems to be a certain inevitability about it. 

However, I remember one of my visits to the 9/11 site. I had travelled there with architecture students, their guide for several days in the city that I once called home. At that time the memorial had just been completed, but the rest of the area was a sea of scaffolds and detours. It was, to be honest, chaos. And yet, as we came upon the walls of names, the noise of the world surrounding us seemed to dim, the emotional resonance of the place taking center stage. It was a moment where, despite the swirling cacophony around us, I was connected to not only the students that joined me, but the numerous strangers that were also there.

It is my hope that we do not need tragedy to find unity. That the sense of collective shared experience can be found outside of sorrow and pain. It is this hope that I put out into the world - an act of optimism in spite of my pessimistic tendencies. And a reminder, to myself,  that we, as Architects, can play a role in creating the spaces where these shared experiences will occur. 

Monday, September 11, 2006

The Power of a Symbol

Five years ago, today, I sat in class, structures class if I remember correctly, trying to stay awake. After all, it was an 8:30 lecture. The moment class ended, a student stood up and said, simply, “The World Trade Center was just attacked.” It was 9:25 am.

The student walked out without saying another word, and for a moment, I thought it was some weird practical joke. I would find out, five minutes later, eyes riveted to a television set in the department office, that it was not. It’s been said over and over again, the world changed that day. It’s not an exaggeration.

I watched, on television, as the World Trade Center crumbled down, floor by floor, until it was lost in the cloud of its own dust. I remember our academic advisor bursting out into tears, as we stared on in disbelief. I remember walking home, after school officially closed, thinking, how could the weather be so perfect, the day so unbelievably beautiful, when, elsewhere, chaos was erupting.

As we would learn, the targets were specific. The buildings were chosen for the special meanings they embodied. They were symbols, markers. It was meant to be as significant a psychological blow as it was a physical catastrophe.

As we look on, five years later, so much has yet to be done. The wound is still open, the healing not really begun. In the wake of 9/11, a call went out, a challenge made, one which some considered the opportunity for architects to reassert the value of their work. Rebuild on suddenly sacred ground, and create something that respected the past while inspiring the future. It was a wish for remembrance. It was a cry for defiance.

I fear for the success. I feel deflated by the solution. And perhaps, more than anything else, I am disappointed by the process. Politics, egos, personal interests – they dominate the rebuilding process. They are the stories to arise from the rubble of that day.

Three years ago, during a scholarship interview, I was asked the question on everyone’s mind, “What do you think should be done at the World Trade Center site?” A loaded question. I faced four strangers who looked on expectantly.

I told them that what I hoped for. I hoped for a place that would remember the significance of the event while engendering new life, new activity, a new spirit. I hoped that, in the process of reconstruction, disparate parties might unite under a common goal, a vision that could encapsulate the hopes, memories, desires of the expectant millions watching. I told them that the challenge, above anything else, would be reconciling the desires of those who saw the site as a massive graveyard and those who saw the site as an opportunity for massive redevelopment. I told them that any solution would have to successfully address both. That life and death, happiness and sadness, would need to exist, side by side. I told them that I believed architecture had the power to reach such greatness.

I still believe in that greatness. I still believe that architecture can take on such weight, such responsibility. It is the power of a symbol – this ability for concrete objects to illicit abstract emotions. I just don’t know, given the process so far, if the results will ever meet the heavy expectations. Some might say nothing would. And perhaps they are right. But, perhaps, if the process hadn’t been derailed the way it has, there might have been a better chance for success.