I just awoke. Been down with the flu. This time mostly headaches pains. Congestion gave me a break,...so far. Dreams. Fevered dreams about my life family events real, and imagined.
A scene.
I'm with a large crowd sitting outside of a pizza place watching the first World Trade Center go up. People then as I remember were as much in awe of it going up as they were seeing it come down.
I always thought our skyscrapers were going to be eternal as with Rome or Athens.
In the 9/11 attacks the WTC went down faster than the Titanic,...think of that. Faster.
This should have taught us humility.
Our monuments are imperfect, and very temporary.
7 comments:
Skyscrapers won’t last. They’re just hollow shells with some flimsy honeycombing inside. Also, steel girders are valuable scrap. They’ll be melted down long before natural decay has a chance to finish the job.
Stone is far more durable. The thing to remember about the pyramids in particular is that they’re *solid rock.* Those little passages and mortuary chambers inside are just a tiny fraction of the total volume, probably less than one percent. Solid limestone lasts a long, long time.
I hope you’re feeling better. Been kinda down myself.
Z
....it went down faster than the Titanic.
As part of an introductory course in structural design a discussion of the behavior of steel when subjected to the heat of a fire is very much a part of the curriculum. The vulnerability of buildings large and small is well understood. Our art and our architecture (the art of the techne) is vulnerable.
Which is why it is so precious, and why its destruction is an obscenity.
As you can see by the image. The first WTC was not made to wartime specs. It all hung from a mostly unprotected central core. Yes with maintenance it could have stood for centuries. However not if under direct attack.
Even WW2 style bombing would have endangered it if not brought it down.
I don't buy 'any' of the sweaty deluded conspiracies. However that building as it was constructed was a perfect storm of disaster waiting to happen. It's just as ugly replacement is a perfect example of closing the barn door after the unicorn has flown away.
As for the 17 year long war it started. Well 17 for us generations for the rest of the world. As for that we should have left Afghanistan, and 'only' that bunch a glowing crater, and had done with it.
I will give the engineer who designed the buildings credit for them having survived the impact of the planes and not immediately collapsing. As for the architect, I feel sorry for the man. To be given such a commission and then to produce a building which if it were not for its size would be a forgettable mediocrity, is too sad to dwell on. The John Hancock building in Chicago is of the same era, and if it does not have the joy of the Chrysler Building, it does have a real dignity to it. The Trade Center's lobbies felt cheap.
On a personal note I remember a Brooklyn girl who was delighted by the gale force winds of the World Trade Center plaza which sent her skirts flying, à la Marylin Monroe. For me that is worth a point or two.
Either you follow the designs of nature in your structures or... you die.
It's as simple as that. Nature does not use squares. They have no integrity.
Well as you know all born New Yorkers hated that place. It was ugly soulless, and a general fuck you insult to the City. I worked there for two years before I began my Broadcast life. Soulless.
I then spent a few years at the Empire State Building where our transmitter office was. The difference was like coming from a florescent box for lab rats to a human office building. One that at least has a sense of craft, and style to it. Art Deco vs an aluminum light box.
I was nearly there on the day. At the time I ran my radio station's operations department. We were having planning meetings with the tech staff of WTC. This about our finally moving our transmitter over there from the Empire State building...we were among the last to make the switch. As I remember they gave us a nice deal to quit Empire.
Our meeting was for 10:45 on the morning of September 11th. Part of my crew was already there having breakfast in the lower concourse. They got out. The meeting would have been on the 95th floor of Tower One. Unlikely we would have made it if it had been an early meeting.
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