ABSTRACT
A CONVERSATION IS BEING CLOSED. A public process — the most important planning project of my lifetime in New York City—has been hijacked by a small cohort of self-interested mediocrities who have simply reimposed the functional and ideological program that was there before. The open competition of ideas that should have determined the future of the site will now never take place. There will be a competition —under the sanction and supervision of the same people who so deafly pursued their narrow vision of reconstruction—for a marker to be placed at the bottom of the thirty foot pit that the “master architect” will provide. How will this memorial be constrained? Liebeskind, who showed a complete willingness to compromise his ideas to secure the job, raised the floor of the excavation forty feet from the level of bedrock to accommodate a bus terminal below. So, there will be no excavations in his excavation, the appropriate depth having already been plumbed. And what of the sky above? Will competitors be allowed to climb the walls of this imposed artistic confinement and reach upward?
