As a critic of the World Trade Center design process, architect Eli Attia is best known for his May 2003 shadow study of the “Wedge of Light,” which quickly put to rest official claims that this would be a space within which the sun would “shine without shadow” every 9/11 morning.
The shadow study is just one small episode in an ongoing effort to see to it that this generation gives the World Trade Center site what it deserves: humanity’s best. This effort has included two kinds of outreach to news media, decision makers and fellow architects: (1) analysis explaining why, architecturally, the site’s full potential — memorial, urban, economic, aesthetic — for revitalizing Lower Manhattan cannot be realized via the current design process, and (2) specific concrete proposals for how to remedy the situation.
Three for the World , Eli Attia’s 2002–03 design for the World Trade Center, is offered here to reignite and recalibrate the public’s imagination as to what is really possible on this historic site.
APRIL 2002
Seven months after 9/11, the rebuilding
authorities — the Lower Manhattan Development
Corporation (LMDC) and the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey — issue
their first official statements of intent
about the future of the World Trade Center
site: The LMDC publishes its “blueprint” for
rebuilding. And the LMDC and Port Authority
issue a joint request for proposals (RFP)
from architects — a “request” written
so as to bar from consideration all but the
largest New York City-based corporate firms.
Collectively, these statements give official sanction to the design proposal that World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein has been making since at least as early as 20 September 2001, just nine days after 9/11: Restore the street grid to create stock development parcels for 4-5 office buildings of conventional height, with one parcel reserved for a “memorial,” to be completely segregated from all other development on the site.
MAY 2002
Eli responds in two ways. He warns
in a Newsday op-ed that
if the rebuilding authorities do not change
this pro-corporate, pro-developer design agenda,
the next World Trade Center will be doomed
to mediocrity.
And he, along with his wife Noa Attia, launches the Which Future for Ground Zero? petition at phoenixUSA.org, calling for an open competition to design an integrated solution for the entire World Trade Center site.
AUGUST 2002
By midsummer — in tandem with the
public’s rejection of the rebuilding
authorities’ six initial plans — the
petition has gathered 10,000 signatures, including Philip
Johnson and Terence Riley,
chief curator of architecture and design at
The Museum of Modern Art.
By the time the petition concludes with nearly 11,000 signatures, it has become by far the largest organized civic action concerning the future of the World Trade Center site.
On the afternoon of August 20th — the day the LMDC announces its “ innovative design study” (which it later brands as a “competition” ) — LMDC chair John Whitehead telephones Eli at home and makes it very clear that, if Eli submits his qualifications to the LMDC, he will be among the finalists selected to participate. Eli turns Whitehead down, for two reasons: The price of admission for participating architects — their intellectual property rights — is too high. And the design agenda has never changed.
DECEMBER 2002
One signatory to Eli and Noa’s petition
is John Lumea, an editor
and writer living in New York. By late 2002,
it has become clear to Lumea, a veteran participant
in that year’s various civic initiatives
to gauge public opinion on rebuilding, that
the authorities are not “listening
to the city” and that their design process
seems less and less likely to produce a worthy
result.
Lumea contacts Eli Attia to request a meeting to explore options. The meeting, which takes place a week before the LMDC announces seven finalists, begins a collaboration between Eli, Noa and John that continues today.
JANUARY 2003
Group launches
a Web site at phoenixproject.info
FEBRUARY 2003
Early in the month, the group gives an
interview to Maggie Haberman of
the New York Daily News.
In a final effort to influence the rebuilding authorities before they make their planned selection of an architect at the end of the month, Eli telephones Larry Silverstein, who advises Eli to contact LMDC planning chief Alexander Garvin. During a 13 February meeting in Garvin’s office, Eli shows Garvin the design presented here, to illustrate to Garvin how much more it is possible to achieve for the World Trade Center site than the authorities’ design agenda will ever allow.
A week before New York Governor George Pataki and the authorities announce their choice of Daniel Libeskind on 27 February, the group places Eli Attia’s World Trade Center design presentation online. They begin using the design as the centerpiece of their ongoing effort to demonstrate to news media, decision makers and the public that:
- the most basic and important design decisions
about Ground Zero’s future had already
been made by Larry Silverstein and the authorities
before any architect was asked to respond
to the site;
- the agenda embodied in these decisions,
by definition, shackles Ground Zero’s
memorial, urban, economic, and aesthetic
potential, but will also result in irreparable
harm being done to the site and its users
for generations;
- it is possible to avoid this future and
achieve much more for the site, in all of
these areas, by laying aside this agenda;
and
- the only path to greatness for the next World Trade Center is to start over, with a new process that takes fundamental design responsibility away from politicians and real estate speculators and puts it in the hands of qualified architects, where it belongs.
MARCH 2003
Group gives an interview and design presentation
to Tom McGeveran of the New
York Observer.
MAY 2003
In consecutive stories on 1 and 2 May, Edward
Wyatt of The New York Times breaks
the story on Eli’s shadow study of
the “Wedge of Light” (“Shadows
to Fall, Literally, Over 9/11 ‘Wedge
of Light’ “ and “Spotlight
Is on Wedge of Light, Symbol or Not”).
The study is part of “The Nine Lies of Daniel Libeskind,” the group’s summary report analyzing and critiquing the authorities’ proposed plan as an index of what any plan based on the authorities’ design agenda will produce: unprecedented bulk (in violation of City zoning laws), negligible open space, minimal pedestrian connections across the site, and misappropriation and waste of billions of dollars in public funds. The group explains these issues to Wyatt across six hours of interviews that week.
JULY 2003
Group makes a design presentation to LMDC
board member Madelyn Wils.
SEPTEMBER 2003
Group makes a presentation to members of
the Newsday editorial
board, including Joseph Dolman.
OCTOBER 2003
Group gives nearly 10 hours of interviews,
including a design presentation, to Graham
Rayman of Newsday.
Rayman features analysis from the interviews
in a 13 October cover story on the proposed
plan’s bulk (“Critics: WTC Crammed”)
and a 30 October story on pedestrian crowding,
the lack of open space and other issues (“Building
Tensions: WTC Plan, Cost, Timing Questioned”).
JUNE 2004
Group sends a letter to New York
State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer over
a formal complaint concerning Port Authority
zoning violations at the World Trade Center
site. Spitzer’s correspondence secretary,
Peter Drago, responds with a letter dismissing
the group’s complaint.
Group sends a letter to New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller concerning the paper’s failed rebuilding coverage.
JULY 2004
Group sends a letter to New York
Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent.
AUGUST 2004
In Okrent’s absence on vacation, New
York Times Assistant Managing Editor Allan
Siegal responds with a letter
dismissing the group’s concerns.
Group sends second letter to New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. In December, Carrie Cohen, chief of Spitzer’s Public Integrity Unit, responds with the second letter dismissing the group’s complaint.
OCTOBER 2004
Group makes a presentation to New
York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent.
NOVEMBER 2004
Group makes a presentation to six editors
and reporters of The New York Times,
including David Dunlap , Robin
Pogrebin and Charles Bagli.
MAY – SEPTEMBER 2005
Group
creates and produces a revised and significantly
expanded update of Eli Attia’s World Trade
Center design presentation; Eli names the design Three
for the World; and the group launches
a new Web site at www.threefortheworld.org
