(Architecture critic) Paul Goldberger’s comments on the World Trade Center replacement offerings are the best so far, but miss the most important questions: what should be the role of the project in the world and its impacts on history – history in the largest sense: the evolution of life on this lovely sphere.

Big and associated responsibilities are what that neighborhood of New York is all about – and impacts are far greater than addressed so far. Cities are the largest cause of paving the paradise of nature, that is, the loss of natural and agricultural lands. They are the chief cause of climate change and resulting species extinctions, which is to say change in the trajectory of evolution. Cities play no small part in the addiction to oil that lies at the foundation of pressure for wars to keep gasoline flowing. More accurately, the city of cars, sprawl, freeways and cheap energy is the culprit and, surprisingly to most people, the city of pedestrians, that uses comparatively much less energy and looks something like the compact “mixed-uses” of Lower Manhattan, is a very major part of the solution. We need a vision large enough to realize that what is at stake at Ground Zero is the near infinity of the future of evolution. If we stopped to think for a moment about the crushing of evolution’s normal steady course, due largely to the way we build and run cities, we could see that a direct approach to solving the ecological problems of the planet hang in the influential balance of a project as crucial as the World Trade Center replacement.

Not a typical large business district, nor a splashy set of office towers speaking to wealth and power in a world of growing poverty and violent disaster, but a full-bodied community that is tuned to our ecological realities at this time – which could also look spectacular in the way of the New York skyline – is what humanity and the biosphere badly need.

As we rebuild at the site of the World Trade Center, will we build for peace? Will we assess the future? Consider the biosphere?

Zero to Infinity in New York City
By Richard Register

Abstract

Build an elevated park/plaza high enough to make public views available to the Hudson River and Statue of Liberty. Place a monument to the past, present and future of Lower Manhattan there: two large scale models and a bench shaped like a question mark with the large curve focusing on the Hudson River/Statue of Liberty view. The structure supporting the plaza and park would also support new buildings surrounding the park and framing the view – culture and nature in mutual respect. There would be a mix of uses and building features and materials that would constitute a direct addressing of future ecological and resource realities. Thus the entire ensemble would be a living, healthy “ecological city” core within a city, dedicated to the memory of the past, including the World Trade Center towers, and to a healthy present and future. The models could be cast of steel from the World Trade Center towers, coated with bronze for better preservation.

Context

September 11, 2001 brought us face to face with the demons of human being endlessly fighting human being, radically amplifying injustices in vengeful reaction. But the war between humans is a smaller – if intensely experienced - case of the yet larger war of humans against all the rest of life on the planet, making an ecological Ground Zero of the entire Earth.

The memory of the catastrophe at the World Trade Center on 9/11 is a crack in the door to the insight that as we rant and rave among our own, whole other species to the last surviving individual are destroyed forever. What does species extinctions have to do with the destruction of these great icons of American global trade dominance – and almost 3,000 human beings? An integral part of this line of thinking is to notice that what was destroyed were two of the world's largest buildings. Could it be worthwhile to consider what we are rebuilding in the context of destruction of not just human life, but all life? Could it be that we have given far from enough creative and compassionate thought to the buildings and cities we construct and what they destroy, as well as to our ever so human conflicts and what they destroy? Could it be that the very city we are building constitutes an attack upon nature?

For those of us who study the effects of particular city designs, the answer is unequivocally yes, and not only that, but it is also true that we can call off that attack by rebuilding cities in harmony with nature. It is not a small piece of this argument to note that in so building we can create a far more sane and happy environment for people too. If we could make the World Trade Center Replacement and 9/11 Memorial Project an example of building for Peace on Earth and Peace with Earth, we will have done as well by our unhappy reality at Ground Zero as can be done.

If we are to do that, we will need to bring into this space the best insights of what is becoming ever more widely known as "ecological building principles."

With these principles in mind I make the following proposal:

Somewhere between zero and infinity we make our way.

We should build a monument with memories of things gone wrong and in dedication to things in harmony that we can create into the future. We should in this enterprise recognize that we need to learn to build in balance with life on Earth. We need to celebrate the waters, air and solid foundation of Earth, to build tall and strong as the World Trade Center Towers were, anchored in the lithosphere, but also we need to build on the foundation of knowledge of our times and the future. We need to address the high population of humanity, changing climate, collapsing biosphere, rapidly dwindling resources in several categories and continuing increase of many kinds of pollution.On the very positive side, we should also recognize the many accomplishments and innovations making possible a steady move in the opposite direction, toward sustainability and healthy living systems, have been accomplished and serve as a foundation for healthy planning and design. Concerning security issues, a project on the World Trade Center site that would constitute a real community in full mix of living, working, learning, recreating and communicating between one another, as well as working for trade, would produce more of a symbol of dedication to cooperation and working together than a project that is strictly focused on control of world commerce. Hence, the built product would be a living community much more so than a target for promoting the political and cultural views of antagonists. In the environmental dimension, building so that the city can thrive on a small fraction of today’s energy diet helps move the country away from destabilizing dependence on foreign sources.

We should, then, make the replacement structure an intensely urban portal to nature, complete with a view out to and down the Hudson River. A view to the river and the Statue of Liberty is powerful and natural to this location, however, a row of buildings separates the World Trade Center site from the riverfront. Therefore we need to create an elevated public park or plaza. One or several of them, should hover fifteen to twenty-five stories in the air surrounded on all sides but one with new buildings, one or more parks cupped as if in an open hand, with buildings celebrating what we have learned about architecture working with, of and for an evolving pedestrian city. We need a car-free area of the city, a model dedicated to energy conservation, recycling and high civic activity befitting the intensity of New York.

From the single park or largest of the parks we can contemplate an open space occupied by people and beautiful planting, a stream of flowing, life-giving water or fountain or both and beyond, a view out to the great river and toward its connection with the World Ocean and its North Atlantic Basin. On one side of that plaza, the side looking over the rest of the plaza and toward the view out to the river and Statue of Liberty, place the actual monument to the things the World Trade Center Towers represented, to the remembrance of the victims and to the peaceful resolution of conflicts into the future.

That monument would be two scale models and a question mark shaped bench. One model would be exact to scale, probably bronze representation of lower Manhattan with the World Trade Center towers rising over all, as they were at daybreak, 9/11/02. The model would be approximately thirty feet long. Next to it would be another model of the same portion of Manhattan before human occupation and at the same scale – rolling hills, creeks, ponds, shorelines – surrounded by sculptures of the animals that used to live in this place, each about two and a half feet in largest dimension so that each would get the same detail of rendering, including representatives of the native mammals, birds, amphibians, fish, insects, crustaceans... Around the September 11 model would be representations of common everyday human-produced artifacts including dishes, subway cars, a set of clothes, clock, television set, a year 2001 automobile, computer, etc. rendered at the same size regardless of relative actual size of the objects. Where the models are cut from central and upper Manhattan, the cross section would show the layers of stone, earth and water. We need a sense of time, the past, our present opportunities and problems, the future.

The models, of course, represent the natural past and the urban recent past and present. Representing the future there should be a large bench in the shape of a question mark exactly the right height to sit on. That peculiar curve that folds back on itself, one large curve and another very small, with a separate spot like a big round stool or ottoman, is an extraordinarily interesting shape for gathering people on a bench. The large curve should face the two models and out over the plaza and out over the view down the Hudson through the gap in the buildings, a little to the west of due south. The bench should be of stone of ancient plant and animal fossils embedded with small parts from international space ships: sliced, polished and sparkling stainless steel, titanium, silicon, glass, cast acrylic, aluminum and so on. Sit here. Think of time, history, community, responsibility.

The buildings framing the view here constitute a portal to as much of nature as can be seen in Lower Manhattan and the curve of the question mark bench would focus a limited number of people’s attention in that direction. The buildings themselves would be a new generation of architecture conscious of sun angles, local climate, recycling and energy conservation. They would enhance the already largely pedestrian nature of New York and the intensely mixed-use development at close proximity in the city. They would support ecological design features such as windscreens, solar greenhouses and rooftop gardens. The entire development – park, monument, buildings and bridges to connect some of the buildings – would be intense, but it would be an ecologically tuned, very low-impact development. Wastes would become new resources here: food and garden wastes would be turned into new soil for use
in the rooftop, terrace and elevated park gardens. Plantings of native plants on the new buildings would attract a modest number of native birds and insects. Community gardens nestled into terraces on the sunny side of buildings would constitute a new kind of Machupichu or Hanging Gardens, but in the urban verticalness of New York.

The new set of structures would be a small city in its own right. Under the plaza, which would have a number of skylights punched through it, there would be five or six stories of architecture lit from the inside by the atriums below the skylights. Below that, with another ten or fifteen stories to go, would be activities that need little or no natural light, where controlled lighting is called for, such as theaters, photo labs, modest scale automated production and warehousing. In most cities distribution is largely by trucks and the warehousing is in lower value land miles away on the outskirts – to simply distribute the goods by truck and gasoline on crowded freeways is an ecological disaster in its own right. Here, the warehousing for the World Trade and Pedestrian City Center within the bigger city would be located a short elevator and forklift ride from the offices, shops and residences that would be served by the warehousing. The mundane and the strength of the foundations would be below; the work and recreation life, the remembrance and the celebration, the distraction and the focused contemplation would be in the sun, light, fresh air and views higher up.

The horror and grief we could remember well at the monument in this new environment. But the experience needs to be placed in a context dedicated to justice and building a new trust in ourselves. We need to reestablish trust with nature too, about which we are all too oblivious when building our big buildings and flying about in fossil fueled planes. Remember that trust can only be earned by doing something to make life better. In building the replacement for the World Trade Center towers and the 9/11 monument, we must make it better for all of life, the only scale of trust large enough to solve the problems that caused the catastrophe in the first place.

Where the World Trade Center stood the scale was big, but neither as big as the impact cities have on our living world, nor their glorious, delirious, problematic delivery to humanity. Perhaps the unknown biggest puzzle of this period in history is how to build our cities right, so we don’t destroy the biosphere, climate and evolution, and so that we deliver the possibility of human compassionate creativity to all the children of we the people of Earth.

Therefore we need to begin building most right, right where things went most wrong. We’ve been building in a mirror of ourselves with little heed to the rest of life on the planet and in this way of building nothing could be more conspicuous than the 110 story World Trade Center towers. This is not to say that at their physical zenith they represented the nadir of over-exploitation of the Earth – the sprawling suburbs are far worse than these two behemoths nestled into their living neighborhoods once were. But we need as much as – or more than – anything else to now realize we need to build right by the future. We need to comprehend that there can be an ecologically-fit way to build and live in our communities, a way in harmony with the maintenance and evolution of life here on this thin shelf between outer space and bedrock. The automobile-based city with its sprawling layout and radical dependence on asphalt and oil is located squarely at the foundation of much, and probably even most of the problem of ecological collapse and at the foundation also of the grossly out of balance international trade relationships in which the rich are getting richer and poor poorer.

Manhattan, in regard to automobile and oil dependence, is off to a good start; we should run with it and emphasize what’s right about the city. It uses about half the energy per person as the average American city. That’s because people take the subway or walk and seldom get around by private automobile. It is also because walls of residential “units” and office spaces are shared. Small separate structures lose their heating and cooling energy to the environment after a single use. Proximity of many “land uses” due to high density and high diversity development means that other functions of the city are more efficient as well: goods delivery, shopping, face-to-face communications, recycling and so on.

But if we add to this good start the powerful comprehension that this is just the beginning of rethinking cities on ecological principles, we might just realize that rebuilding at the World Trade Center site could lead cities of the world into a new era of building in balance with nature and with far better service to citizens than ever before possible. As we move toward the city accessible by transit, bicycles and pedestrian layout we also move toward a more equitable city as well, a city with less need to extract resources from distant lands, one likely to be less the focus of righteous indignation.

At ground zero, then, we should place our sites firmly between there and the infinity of human imagination, between zero and full possibility for stewardship and our own glorious creativity. Without the wisdom of compassion to temper that creativity, we will launch more bombs built on hatred and vengeance, built on ignorance and technical narrowness into the fabric of human society, more poisons launched into the atmosphere, more resources leached into the pockets of the few and drained away from the recycling of life in its richness for all.