Christopher,

Thanks for the account from an engineering perspective.  When Architectural
Record showed up in my mailbox today I actually read it for the first time
in years, before consigning it to the pile on the subwoofer.   Along with a
retrospective of the construction of the WTC towers, AR solicited views from
architects and engineers on the future of the WTC site.  I was probably more
surprised than I should have been by the number of architects who felt that
the towers should be reconstructed exactly as they were  - Cesar Pelli,
Henry Guthard, Robert A.M Stern (with qualifications), but I was most
interested in Peter Eisenman's comment :

"Rebuilding the WTC as it was would be showing nostalgia for a world that
doesn't exist.  What has happened with the media coverage shows we don't
need monuments.  Buildings no longer contain memory.  The media contains
that memory.  So we need to build again with the understanding that we don't
want to build the same buildings."

On its face it seems like a reasonable statement, but when "deconstructed"
(what an inadvertently chilling word), its parts are disturbing, even from a
practitioner of design with a "D", the idea that "buildings no longer
contain memory" is an odd one.

Lisa

----- Original Message -----
From: "Met History" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Cross post from a Princeton listserv...


> ...through my friend Henry Barkhorn.    ---Christopher Gray
> >Subject: WTC attacks, perspective of an engineer