Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker magazine. The design for the World Trade Center site has been chosen and architect Daniel Libeskind created the winning proposal. Goldberger will describe the selection process and comment on the winning design.
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DATE March 3, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A⨠TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A⨠NETWORK NPR⨠PROGRAM Fresh Airâ¨â¨Interview: Paul Goldberger of The New Yorker discusses theâ¨design chosen for the World Trade Center siteâ¨BARBARA BOGAEV, host:â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev in for Terry Gross.â¨â¨The architectural void at the World Trade Center site began to take shape withâ¨last week's announcement of Studio Daniel Libeskind's winning design. At theâ¨official ceremony, Libeskind thanks the people of New York for theirâ¨extraordinary commitment and passion. He said surely buildings are built outâ¨of concrete and steel and glass but they're actually built out of theâ¨spiritual content of the hearts and the soul of citizens. This collaborationâ¨is what has made the design process for the World Trade Center site soâ¨remarkable.â¨â¨My guest Paul Goldberger says the fact that a design of beauty and depth hasâ¨emerged out of such unprecedented public participation and urban planning isâ¨an important part of the story. Goldberger is the architecture critic forâ¨The New Yorker and has written about the process of rebuilding ground zero inâ¨a series of articles for the magazine. His latest appears in this week'sâ¨edition. I asked him to describe the key elements of the Libeskind design.â¨â¨Mr. PAUL GOLDBERGER (The New Yorker): Its most famous feature, the one thatâ¨everyone has seemed to have grabbed on to and that attracted a lot of peopleâ¨to Libeskind's design is his notion that you memorialize the people who diedâ¨on September 11th and the sense of loss and tragedy by leaving what's inâ¨effect a kind of open wound in the cityscape by leaving some of the foundationâ¨of the original World Trade Center open and exposed in perpetuity as a relic,â¨as almost like an archaeological site, rather as you might have in ancientâ¨Rome, and that that would create a sense of going back into the past and alsoâ¨that somehow going down in is a way of connecting and respecting and reachingâ¨back.â¨â¨Libeskind has also pointed out, I think, correctly, that the huge concreteâ¨walls that surrounded the foundation of the World Trade Center held onâ¨September 11th. They did not buckle and collapse, and that he sees in that aâ¨kind of metaphor for the stability of American democracy, and that by keepingâ¨them visible to people, that will remind them that the country went on, theâ¨country survived, that everything was not lost even though many people wereâ¨lost.â¨â¨BOGAEV: I'm thinking of The New York Times editorial last week about theâ¨design that the design somehow caught both the grieving and the idealism inâ¨the air after 9/11.â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: I think it did, and I think it has a very subtle balance ofâ¨grieving and idealism as you've said or looking backwards and looking forward,â¨because it also has a lot of very positive things. There's a wonderful spireâ¨that is sort of a balance between the high-tech and the poetic that would beâ¨the tallest thing in the country, and I believe, in fact, in the world. Itâ¨would not be a regular office building. It would be a spire attached to anâ¨office building but it would go up 1,776 feet high and it would contain anâ¨antenna for broadcast, an observation tower, a restaurant, and Libeskind hasâ¨this idea of putting some sort of hanging gardens in it which may or may notâ¨work out. He's had to reduce the number of gardens up in the sky from hisâ¨earlier versions of this, so that there you have a great symbol in the sky.â¨â¨And I think that's terribly important because people, particularly those whoâ¨were lucky enough not to have lost people on September 11th felt what they hadâ¨lost was the skyline and they have been yearning to heal the skyline, to healâ¨that wound in the skyline of Lower Manhattan and to build something tall makesâ¨great sense to do that, to respond to that desire.â¨â¨On the other hand, we don't really want another 100-story office building orâ¨apartment building or hotel. I don't think at this moment people want toâ¨occupy a building like that. So a symbolic spire is a way of going back intoâ¨the sky, of making this statement and yet not of creating an enormous andâ¨expensive building that would possibly end up being empty.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Now I'm thinking that you have been very critical of skyscraperâ¨proposals and I think you wrote directly in The New Yorker after Septemberâ¨11th that perhaps the destruction of the World Trade Center put an end to thisâ¨kind of thing is how you put it, this building of such a visible symbol ofâ¨power and strength and wealth.â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Well, a lot of people, including me, have speculated overâ¨whether it would. And, you know, it's important to remember that we wereâ¨beginning to have somewhat second thoughts about the virtues of very, very,â¨very tall skyscrapers for a long time. There's a kind of excess bravado toâ¨them, and it's not an accident that the only building taller than the Worldâ¨Trade Center in this country is Sears Tower in Chicago, which was built allâ¨the way back to 1974, only a year after the World Trade Center.â¨â¨We've allowed the Asian cultures mainly--Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore--toâ¨build supertall buildings because they're the ones that in a way are kind ofâ¨younger and less mature on the world economic stage, even though they're veryâ¨old cultures in other ways, and they've wanted to sort of flex their musclesâ¨and it's a way in which people flex their muscles.â¨â¨I think going up into the sky is a very beautiful thing, and I have alwaysâ¨hoped that we would find a way to sort of navigate between these difficultâ¨things, between not wanting to be too arrogant, not wanting to be excessiveâ¨and build out of hubris and yet not want to cower on the ground, either, andâ¨not want to give up something that really is in the DNA of New York which isâ¨to go up into the sky.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Just one more question about the tower. What do you think of thisâ¨1,776-foot-high business?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Well, I find it actually a little hokey in some ways, and Iâ¨do think that Libeskind for all his gifts as an architect does have anâ¨occasional tendency to play to the sentimental a little too much. And theâ¨notion of picking that as an arbitrary number--1776 is a critical date in theâ¨history of America--it doesn't automatically translate into a logical heightâ¨for a building, and I think he tends sometimes to mix up historical symbolsâ¨and architectural expressions in a way that kind of gets a little muddy andâ¨confused.â¨â¨On the other hand, it might also be a really skillful political move becauseâ¨if the Port Authority, which has a lot of control over this project as theâ¨original builders of the World Trade Center and the owners of ground zero,â¨decides it's a little too big and a little too expensive and says, `Let's cutâ¨it down,' Libeskind can say, `You're destroying 1,776, this important number.â¨How can you do that? 1676 is not an important number. 1776 is an importantâ¨number,' and maybe it could be a way of keeping it as tall as he wants it.â¨So actually maybe I'm not being fair to him by dismissing that number asâ¨sentimental. Maybe it's actually very crafty.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Now the original Libeskind design featured also two ground-levelâ¨parks, one positioned to capture a wedge of sunlight--each year on Septemberâ¨11th from the time the first plane hit the Trade Centers' north tower untilâ¨the time that the second tower fell. So is that still part of the proposalâ¨and what do you think of it?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: That is part of the proposal. Libeskind calls it the Wedgeâ¨of Light. That, too, is one of those things that's sort of just on the edgeâ¨of a little bit hokey. On the other hand, it could work. On the other hand,â¨if it's cloudy on September 11th, no one will know anyway, but he has sort ofâ¨positioned the buildings in such a way that the position of the sun at thatâ¨hour on that day would assure that it would come directly in with no shadows.â¨â¨Now of course, it's not only on that day, but probably on September 10th andâ¨September 12th that would be pretty similar as well. The sun, you know, onlyâ¨moves a tiny bit day to day. It's a little much, but I certainly don't thinkâ¨it's sort of evil or bad, and, you know, there's another thing that kind ofâ¨goes along with it that he's calling the Path of Heroes, I believe, which isâ¨he wants to put markings in the pavement that go from the center of groundâ¨zero out in all kinds of different directions, in all kind of different lines,â¨almost like a--so these little granite strips or lines or markings wouldâ¨almost look like a million of those children's Pick Up Sticks, that game.â¨â¨And what that would do would be draw a line between ground zero and a pointerâ¨in the direction of each fire company or rescue company or ambulance squad orâ¨police group that responded to the call on 9/11, pointing toward their homeâ¨base to show that people came from all directions to participate in the rescueâ¨effort and it would be a way of honoring that.â¨â¨That is also one of those things that on the one hand, it's a little too much;â¨on the other hand, if you were walking on the sidewalk in thisâ¨neighborhood--imagine it was all now newly rebuilt--and you saw this unusualâ¨line, this little strip, perhaps of granite, in the sidewalk, it would be aâ¨very beautiful and subtle way of showing you that this place was special andâ¨connected to an extraordinary historical event while also weaving that intoâ¨day-to-day life as you kind of walk down the street. So it might work, andâ¨I'm certainly for giving him a try and letting it happen and we'll see.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Paul Goldberger is the architecture critic for The New Yorker. Hisâ¨latest article in a series about the rebuilding of the World Trade Center siteâ¨appears in this week's edition. We'll continue our conversation after thisâ¨break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: I'm talking with Paul Goldberger. He's the architecture critic forâ¨The New Yorker magazine.â¨â¨The competing design to the Libeskind proposal was from Rafael Vinoly's team,â¨the THINK team. Can you remind us what the think team design was and whatâ¨were some of the objections to it?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Sure, the THINK team was a remarkable group of three reallyâ¨gifted architects and a landscape architect: Rafael Vinoly, Fred Schwartz andâ¨Shigeru Ban--who's an architect from Tokyo; Fred Schwartz is another Newâ¨Yorker, and Ken Smith, a landscape architect. They came up with a fascinatingâ¨and I think very moving and beautiful proposal which was to create aâ¨latticework over the footprints of the original twin towers that would more orâ¨less echo the original towers but as a kind of ghostly, transparent skeletonâ¨or latticework. And their notion was to place inside the latticework smallerâ¨sections that would be like little buildings that would be cultural facilitiesâ¨of one kind or another that would be inside this kind of framework orâ¨truss-work, but most of it would be open. And then around the perimeter, awayâ¨from the footprints themselves, they planned, as Libeskind did, to put officeâ¨buildings and the transportation center and possibly a hotel and other things.â¨However, it was their wish to leave that stuff pretty open and not be tooâ¨specific about it, leaving the possibility that other architects might do it.â¨â¨It was actually a very pragmatic and visionary proposal at the same time. Itâ¨was the most visionary in that those towers were really a pretty extraordinaryâ¨and amazing thing. Had they worked, they could have been the shimmering,â¨poetic, almost towers of light, barely material. You would have seen thisâ¨sort of stainless steel framework whooshing up into the sky holding theseâ¨little pods inside it, and then the rest of it would have been just lettingâ¨the ordinary city kind of develop around it. So that part would have beenâ¨quite pragmatic and it would have made a very powerful statement for theâ¨public realm coming first and then you fill in private stuff around the edgesâ¨later.â¨â¨I was very impressed with it and actually not unhappy when there was a senseâ¨that it might be winning the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation'sâ¨preference. I had a tough time myself deciding between the two because of theâ¨larger group of designs that were proposed last December as part of this wholeâ¨exercise in which they invited teams of some of the best architects in theâ¨world to propose plans, the two that were my favorites were, in fact, the twoâ¨that turned out to be the finalists, so I knew that I was not going to be thatâ¨unhappy with either one.â¨â¨The objections to the Vinoly plan were twofold. One was that it was quiteâ¨expensive, and while cost was not the key issue, it did somewhere play someâ¨role. The deciding objection, though, I gather, was the fact that to someâ¨people, it felt not like a beautiful and shimmering symbol of the new andâ¨looking ahead, but like two enormous tombstones, like, echoing the World Tradeâ¨Center in a skeletal form that would have reminded people forever of what hadâ¨happened.â¨â¨And there was a sense on the part of I know the governor who felt stronglyâ¨about this, that it was one thing to do a great and significant memorial onâ¨the ground but that what went up in the skyline should only look forward andâ¨not look back. Now the architects, of course, felt this was looking forwardâ¨and didn't really like hearing it described that way, but to some people itâ¨was, and I think that's what ultimately did it in, and my understanding isâ¨that while people admired the Libeskind, at the end of the day, what carriedâ¨the vote was not so much pro-Libeskind feeling as a negative feeling on theâ¨part of some key players in this whole thing about how people would interpretâ¨those THINK team towers and the fear that they would be seen as hugeâ¨tombstones. Somebody said it's the skeletons of death, not, you know, aâ¨future-looking thing. And while I don't agree with that and the architectsâ¨certainly didn't agree with that, a couple of key people did and so they wentâ¨to the other plan.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Who ultimately made the decision? Who were the players involved?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: The players are the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation,â¨which is an agency set up by the state of New York, the Port Authority, whichâ¨is a New York-New Jersey bistate agency that owns ground zero, the city of Newâ¨York itself, whose mayor, Michael Bloomberg, controls some of the seats on theâ¨board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and the state of Newâ¨York whose governor, George Pataki, ultimately holds the most cards in hisâ¨hand here.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, it's such a difficult thing to maneuver around, and I think inâ¨your writing in The New Yorker, you've alluded to this, that so many peopleâ¨expressed the desire for the twin towers to be rebuilt in the wake of 9/11...â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Yes.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...and that there seem to be this collective--I don't know, sense ofâ¨denial that they knew this wasn't going to happen, we weren't going to rebuildâ¨the World Trade Center...â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Right.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...as it once was, but somehow they might not have wanted to let goâ¨of that.â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Right. I think that's right. You know, there are still aâ¨few people running around saying, `Let's rebuild them as they were.' I thinkâ¨it's a terrible idea because it is no disrespect to those who died to say thatâ¨they were not really very good buildings and that they did not represent theâ¨very best we're capable of now, certainly, and to repeat what was really inâ¨many ways an architectural mistake when we also have 30 years more ofâ¨knowledge of how to build buildings better and how to make cities better wouldâ¨be a terrible mistake and would do no honor to these people. But there are aâ¨lot of people who both want to do that or who just don't really want to comeâ¨to a conclusion about this.â¨â¨And I think it's now beginning to be time. I felt in the months immediatelyâ¨following 9/11 it was, in fact, unseemly to push too fast to decide what toâ¨do. It was much more important to mourn at that time, but we're nowâ¨approaching a year and a half, and that's a very different feeling from theâ¨immediate few months, and I think now it is time to move more and more towardâ¨a forward look and less and less toward looking back.â¨â¨BOGAEV: It sounds as if perhaps that that collective fantasy about the twinâ¨towers was more about the grieving process than about architecture.â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: I certainly hope it was more about the grieving process thanâ¨about architecture. I think that's a good way to put it because it can beâ¨excused if it's part of the grieving process because people are certainlyâ¨entitled to grieve in any way they want and none of us should ever be soâ¨arrogant as to tell people how to grieve. They're entitled to make their ownâ¨choice, but it's not a good architectural choice. It may be a good choice inâ¨terms of helping one heal to think about rebuilding the towers, butâ¨ultimately, it's not really the right decision as we begin now to think moreâ¨and more of building for the future.â¨â¨BOGAEV: There was a flurry of lobbying and media campaigning in the past fewâ¨weeks and both architects, Daniel Libeskind and Rafael Vinoly, appeared onâ¨"Oprah." They also held kind of minisalons or forums at hot spots in the cityâ¨for architecture critics and the press and officials. Did you go to any ofâ¨those events?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: I did not go to any of the forums and stuff like that,â¨although I went to some big public forums where a number of architects spoke,â¨not just these but all the architects involved in the whole exercise,â¨including the ones who did not end up being finalists. I didn't do much inâ¨the three weeks since Libeskind and the THINK group were named as finalists,â¨and most of my conversations with the architects have been sort of moreâ¨one-on-one briefings in their offices, not other situations.â¨â¨But I watched it with amusement because I think it's part of the story. Iâ¨mean, here we are with this amazing situation in which architecture, which isâ¨usually a subject that is relegated to the inside pages of a newspaper, if atâ¨all, is suddenly on the front page all the time. It's in the gossip columns.â¨Everybody's talking about it. It's sort of like being, you know--I feel as anâ¨architecture critic sort of like I've always been covering--I don't know, likeâ¨a sports reporter who used to cover lacrosse who suddenly is covering theâ¨World Series instead and everybody is paying attention to your subject andâ¨everybody's watching every move and it gets right on the front page. So itâ¨does change everything.â¨â¨It's both good and bad, of course. You know, it's great to see peopleâ¨caring about architecture. It's what those of us who love architecture haveâ¨always wanted, and what could be better than being on "Oprah"? But I hope itâ¨doesn't result in watering down all the ideas for public consumption so muchâ¨that their serious ambition gets lost.â¨â¨This is one of the few times in I think my lifetime that I've seen some of theâ¨best architects in the world make proposals for important public places in Newâ¨York and get taken really, really seriously as opposed to being put on a shelfâ¨so that the thing could really be given to some political hack. Well, we'reâ¨not seeing that this time, and so in that way, things are better than everâ¨before. Whether the culture of celebrity is going to ultimately bring usâ¨better architecture, that's another matter, you know, and we just got to seeâ¨over time.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Paul Goldberger is the architecture critic for The New Yorkerâ¨magazine. We'll continue our conversation about the new design for rebuildingâ¨the World Trade Center site in the second half of the show. I'm Barbaraâ¨Bogaev and this is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev.â¨â¨Let's get back to our interview with Paul Goldberger, architecture critic forâ¨The New Yorker magazine. Last week, the Berlin-based firm Studio Danielâ¨Libeskind was announced the winner of a design competition for rebuilding theâ¨site of the World Trade Center. This decision comes after a long series ofâ¨public forums and proposals on how to restore Lower Manhattan.â¨â¨I'd like to step back and talk about the history of this whole process, howâ¨this city got to this decision on the Libeskind design.â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Sure. Mm-hmm.â¨â¨BOGAEV: And six proposals for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center siteâ¨were unveiled in July 2002 at the public meeting that was held at the Javitsâ¨Center. Afterwards, nearly 5,000 people gave their opinions of the designsâ¨and almost all were negative. It was a melee, really. And you wrote in Theâ¨New Yorker that that meeting at the Javits Center was an emblematic event inâ¨the history of city planning. Emblematic of what?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: I think it was emblematic of people asking for boldness inâ¨vision. We're not used to that. We're used to people settling for theâ¨ordinary. Or people when they become actively involved in the public processâ¨doing it to say no; not to say yes. They were complaining--and correctlyâ¨so--about the way in which those six early plans seemed mainly focused onâ¨office space and getting that site back into profit-making condition again, soâ¨to speak. And the fact that it didn't have a powerful symbol, it didn'tâ¨respond enough to the gravity of the events of 9/11 and the need forâ¨commemoration in a really significant way. And that it--those plans did veryâ¨little to suggest that this is not an ordinary piece of land.â¨â¨And for people to say, in a public meeting, `This is not ordinary. This isâ¨special. Give us architecture that reflects that and is equal to theâ¨magnitude of this extraordinary, if tragic, event,' well, that's an amazingâ¨moment. And, in fact, it created a very interesting and difficult dilemma forâ¨the public officials because they were fully behind those plans before, butâ¨they had also said this was going to be a public and open process and theyâ¨intended to listen to the people. So when the people said, `Uh-uh,' theâ¨governor and the officials of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation hadâ¨only two choices: they could have either said, `Well, we didn't really meanâ¨it, people, so we're not going to listen to you. We're just going ahead,' orâ¨`Be prepared to make significant changes.'â¨â¨Since it was an election year and the governor was up for re-election, he wasâ¨not going to choose the first alternative. He chose the second, and orderedâ¨that the process be shifted and changed. And the LMDC, under a man namedâ¨Roland Bets, who was a member of the board, who probably has had the most sortâ¨of passionate feeling about architecture on the part of the board members,â¨suggested issuing a call to the best architects in the world and seeing whoâ¨was interested and just inviting them to submit proposals, and that's whatâ¨happened.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Alex Garvin, this VP for planning at the Lower Manhattan Developmentâ¨Corporation, is a kind of interesting influential figure in this whole story.â¨It seems that his fingerprints are all over it, like Zelig somehow. And youâ¨wrote in The New Yorker...â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Yes.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...that he hosted a daylong briefing with the seven design teams thatâ¨were winnowed down from these more than 400 who submitted ideas, and Garvinâ¨took them to ground zero. What did he talk to them about there, and what kindâ¨of ideas did he plant? What requirements did he place on them for theirâ¨designs?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Well, Garvin, who along with Roland Bets, who is the boardâ¨member who at the sort of executive level pushed this, and then Garvin is theâ¨man who sort of really did a lot of the day-to-day work, had an idea that whatâ¨really mattered most was this balance between great architecture and restoringâ¨the fabric of the city. He's always believed that you make a great publicâ¨space and then the private sector sort of follows around it. And as he says,â¨if the public sector, if the city of New York had never built Central Park,â¨everything would be different. But all of the incredible value of land aroundâ¨Central Park, on the perimeter, came because the private sector responded toâ¨the first move made by the public sector. So his idea always had been doâ¨something great sponsored by the public, and then you will create anâ¨environment in which the private sector wants to participate and wants toâ¨invest and wants to build.â¨â¨So I think he talked to them all about that, he talked to the architects aboutâ¨the meaning of Lower Manhattan, the meaning of ground zero, about theâ¨relationship between the two and about a vision that he had of a day whenâ¨Lower Manhattan would be filled with people coming to pay homage to those whoâ¨were lost on September 11th, to visit the memorial, to work, to attendâ¨conferences, to attend operas and concerts, to shop, to live; that he wantedâ¨all of these different things to be happening, and he explained and promotedâ¨the idea that what makes the city great is the interweaving of all theseâ¨things, and his vision for the site was of a place where all of these thingsâ¨wove together in that, you know, subtle and exciting and powerful way.â¨â¨BOGAEV: So let's say--and this is being pessimistic--that what has legs ofâ¨Libeskind's plan is this bathtub(ph), the pit, the memorial in the ground thatâ¨preserves the slurry walls. How do you think it'll stand up to someâ¨international memorial sites to national tragedies?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Well, what the ground zero memorial has that very fewâ¨memorials do is the power of place, the power of authenticity of place. It isâ¨not honoring something that happened somewhere else or honoring people whoâ¨died somewhere else. But when you come to it, you know you are in the placeâ¨in which this happened. That's very different from something even as greatâ¨and important as the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, say. It's more likeâ¨Gettysburg, in a way, going to the Gettysburg battlefield or some of the greatâ¨battlefield memorials in Europe, where the power of the place is a lot of theâ¨meaning.â¨â¨Now sometimes memorials work in spite of that. The Vietnam Veterans Memorialâ¨is a great example. The Lincoln Memorial, I think, is a great example. Weâ¨think about that as a way of connecting us to the ideas that Lincolnâ¨represented, not to the fact that Lincoln was in Washington or, you know,â¨wasn't on that site anyway. It was, I think, landfill. And I don't think itâ¨was even--I think it was part of the river when Lincoln was in Washington.â¨But we bring to a memorial some of our own experience, some of our ownâ¨passions and knowledge, and yet we also expect it to bring us emotionally to aâ¨different place, to take that and carry it further.â¨â¨I hope that the power of place at ground zero will mean that that's what willâ¨happen with the Libeskind memorial in the bathtub. Of course, we don't reallyâ¨know also how the memorial will be completed because what Libeskind and all ofâ¨the competitors were asked to do was create an overall master plan for groundâ¨zero that would include an appropriate setting for a memorial. So theâ¨Libeskind idea, even though it's a pretty powerful memorial in itself, isâ¨still technically just going to be a backdrop for something else that will goâ¨down there that somebody will design. And the Lower Manhattan Developmentâ¨Corporation is just now gearing up to launch an international competition forâ¨something that will go into that space that will not be designed by Libeskind;â¨will be designed by somebody else. It might be just a way of commemoratingâ¨the names, it might be sculpture, it might be some other thing entirely.â¨â¨BOGAEV: How are security concerns integrated into some of these designs thatâ¨were proposed, and does security have to be integrated into the design processâ¨early on now?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Security is part of the design process for almost anythingâ¨now. It's a sad reality of the world in which we live. I think it'sâ¨integrated into the design that we now have. I don't think there's anything,â¨however, that it has done to make things different from what they mightâ¨otherwise have been, except that I know the Port Authority, which overseesâ¨much of this project, has been very insistent about certain things beingâ¨underground, certain other things not being underground, places in which truckâ¨deliveries to the area can be segregated, so that they can be kept secure andâ¨separate, that sort of thing. It hasn't been integrated into a way that wouldâ¨affect the average person's experience of the site particularly. Many of theâ¨security things are not things you necessarily would see, you know, much moreâ¨advanced kinds of glass that will be used on buildings. But, of course, thoseâ¨things might not even be decided now. We'll what materials, when theâ¨buildings are actually being built in a few years, what materials are on theâ¨market. There may be more advanced things that aren't even around today.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Paul Goldberger is the architecture critic for The New Yorker. Heâ¨has a new article about rebuilding the World Trade Center site in this week'sâ¨edition. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: Back with Paul Goldberger. He's the architecture critic for The Newâ¨Yorker magazine.â¨â¨I'm curious if you had a fantasy about the Manhattan skyline, how it shouldâ¨look, how it might be restored.â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: I've always wanted to see a great tower in Lower Manhattan,â¨to bring it back up again, not necessarily to look like the World Tradeâ¨Center, but to give us something that would make it other than the kind ofâ¨blurry mass that it is now. You know, before the World Trade Center, theâ¨skyline in Lower Manhattan was a bunch of beautiful little narrow spindlyâ¨buildings, many of which were from the '20s and early '30s. They had beenâ¨largely obscured by sort of fatter, bulkier buildings, and the skyline onlyâ¨became interesting again in Lower Manhattan when the Trade Center went up, andâ¨it sort of upped the ante. With the Trade Center gone, we've got nothing butâ¨that sort of blurry mass of dull buildings, and so something that's a point inâ¨the sky, that brings some emotion back in, is very important.â¨â¨I think the Libeskind spire actually has the potential of doing that. It'sâ¨slender, because it's not trying to be full of big office floors, whichâ¨created this sort of boxy skyline that we're now left with. It's just a pointâ¨in the sky, like the very old buildings, and the idea of something that couldâ¨be like sort of the Eiffel Tower of the 21st century, that would use theâ¨technology of our time as creatively as Eiffel used the technology of the 19thâ¨century, appeals to me very much, and I think Libeskind has actually gottenâ¨that idea and tried to express it in his tower.â¨â¨BOGAEV: This a broader question and it's not specifically about the Worldâ¨Trade Center site, but I know that you've done so much thinking about citiesâ¨and the role of architecture in creating the life and the soul of a city, andâ¨I'm also thinking that right now, Americans are under so much strain, there'sâ¨so much general anxiety about a possible war, about the stalled economy, aboutâ¨New York and cities and heightened security in cities. Can you talk in aâ¨general way about how you see urban planning speaking to some of theseâ¨anxieties of our time?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: It's a wonderful question, and it's a wonderful andâ¨troubling question, because it raises a key issue about what the city is. Theâ¨very idea of the city and the very idea of democracy go hand in hand, becauseâ¨cities are about the freedom to move about, to move about spontaneously, to goâ¨where you want to go. They're about the serendipity of chance encounter, andâ¨when we live in an age in which terrorism dominates and security becomesâ¨all-consuming as a concern, it becomes harder and harder for those things thatâ¨make the city what it is to function well. We have to make very differentâ¨kinds of choices. We rush from one place to another, never lingering inâ¨between, and what makes city life wonderful to me is the magic of the placesâ¨in between, often, as much as anything else. That's one part of it. Manyâ¨people also don't even appear in public as they might for security reasons, soâ¨people who can afford it, you know, rush in cars to and fro, and don't walkâ¨even short distances because they get nervous, or people don't go outside asâ¨much as they might. All of those things damage and compromise city life.â¨â¨Now having said that, I do think there are ways architects and planners canâ¨respond. We've certainly seen architects respond very well to new securityâ¨guidelines and find ways in which to make buildings still welcoming andâ¨comfortable. I'm very impressed with the new federal office building that'sâ¨going up in Oklahoma City to replace the one destroyed in the bombing. It hadâ¨to meet very tough new guidelines about security, but the architect hasâ¨managed to find a way to make the facade mostly of glass, even with thoseâ¨guidelines, so that there's still a feeling of openness; it's not a concreteâ¨bunker. And you know, we're working on it. We're aware of it, it's realâ¨tough, and there's no question that you know, a city reflects politicalâ¨reality, and when the political reality is grim, it is very hard for the cityâ¨to be joyful.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Can I ask you where your favorite place is to be in New York?â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Mm, God--I would say walking on a street is my favoriteâ¨thing, and that's said as somebody who, you know, adores great buildings. Iâ¨love to look at the Chrysler Building and the Woolworth Building and to walkâ¨across the Brooklyn Bridge and to be in Central Park, to be in my ownâ¨apartment, to be in a million places in New York, and yet I think the thingâ¨that gives me the most pleasure of all is a stroll up Madison Avenue or alongâ¨Fifth Avenue or along some interesting street in the boroughs, Atlantic Avenueâ¨in Brooklyn, or Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, or a neighborhood street in someâ¨other part of the city.â¨â¨The streets ultimately make the city, even more than the buildings do, and youâ¨know, Louis Kahn, the great Philadelphia architect, once said, `A street isâ¨a room by agreement.' And it's a very beautiful and poetic way to look at theâ¨street and the city. The city is a place of agreement, in a way, a place ofâ¨diversity, a place that we all share, that emphasizes and builds on ourâ¨commonality. And when we are faced with the horror of terrorism, it makes itâ¨very hard to express those things, and we're forced to put them aside for theâ¨moment, I hope just briefly, while we deal with what we would have to call,â¨you know, emergency priorities.â¨â¨But ultimately, terrorism and the city do not go very well together, not justâ¨because of the risk of a city being a target, as New York was on 9/11. Theâ¨whole idea of security leads people to fear being out in public, and being outâ¨in public, walking on the streets, being surprised by new visual experiences,â¨by chance encounters, by seeing a million things you haven't seen before, byâ¨seeing wonderful things that you love that you have seen before, by constantâ¨visual stimulation, those things are all about freedom and looseness and theâ¨pleasures of walking around, which is the ultimate urban pleasure, more thanâ¨any other, and they're very tough to do when you're cowering in fear.â¨â¨BOGAEV: I want to thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you today.â¨â¨Mr. GOLDBERGER: Great. Well, thank you. It's been fun.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker. His latestâ¨article about the rebuilding of ground zero appears in this week's edition ofâ¨the magazine.â¨â¨(Soundbite of piano music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: Ken Werner playing Gershwin.â¨â¨Coming up, a review of two new DVDs that feature hip-hop. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Review: New DVDs "Wild Style" and "Scratch," each documenting theâ¨history of hip-hopâ¨BARBARA BOGAEV, host:â¨â¨In just 20 years, hip-hop has gone from an underground scene in New York to aâ¨global culture phenomenon. In 1982, Charlie Ahearn's feature "Wild Style"â¨caught rappers, graffiti artists, break dancers and deejays just before theâ¨crossover began. In 2001, Doug Pray's documentary "Scratch" profiled aâ¨current generation of deejays who look back to the early days of hip-hop forâ¨inspiration. Both films are now out on DVD, and critic Milo Miles says theyâ¨show how much has and has not changed about hip-hop culture.â¨â¨MILO MILES reporting:â¨â¨In the documentary "Scratch," several hip-hop deejays, or as they now like toâ¨be called, turntableists, pay homage to the vintage movie, "Wild Style." Thisâ¨seems odd, at first. Deejays are not that prominent in the old film. Butâ¨then you realize that almost everything about hip-hop culture from the earlyâ¨days has been transformed, or vanished, except deejays.â¨â¨The so-called plot of "Wild Style" is such a throwaway, you only need to watchâ¨it once. What makes the DVD edition valuable and repeatable is the addedâ¨commentary by director Charlie Ahearn and collaborator Freddy Braithwaite.â¨Braithwaite, a graffiti artist known as Fab Five Freddy, had a vision of whatâ¨hip-hop could become, and he was well ahead of the crowd. As you look at theâ¨bombed-out Bronx of the early '80s and the graffiti-coated subway cars, Ahearnâ¨and Freddy have to remind first-time viewers what the situation was then.â¨â¨(Soundbite from "Wild Style" DVD)â¨â¨Unidentified Man #1: You know what I wanted? I wanted to talk a little bitâ¨about avant garde art and how deeply involved both of us were, what was theâ¨cutting edge of experimental art at that time, experimental music...â¨â¨Unidentified Man #2: Right.â¨â¨Unidentified Man #1: ...and how this film was kind of an expression of thatâ¨for both of us.â¨â¨Unidentified Man #2: Yeah, that's true, because also at the time, when weâ¨were making "Wild Style," you guys got to remember if you heard any rapâ¨records at this time, you might have heard the Sugar Hill Gang, but rap wasâ¨still--was not even a blip on the map. I remember when we would go to meetâ¨people and try to get money to make this film, so many people laughed at us,â¨and we, you know, did everything we were supposed to do, but nobody wanted toâ¨give us any money, and the money that we got to really get this film rolling,â¨ironically, came from the other side of the Atlantic.â¨â¨MILES: Of course, the first thing you notice is that graffiti is so gone fromâ¨hip-hop nowadays. Fab Five Freddy's dream of graffiti being legitimized byâ¨downtown art galleries is barely a memory. Even break dancing only gets theâ¨occasional nod anymore. With the overwhelming rise of rappers and theirâ¨producers, it looked like deejays were as extinct as spray-painters. But aâ¨new generation of deejays got access to improved, more sophisticatedâ¨equipment. They soon discovered that spinning and scratching recordsâ¨delivered a style, a sound and a sensibility that just couldn't be duplicatedâ¨by studio machines.â¨â¨San Francisco's Invisible Scratch Pickles were the first to make modernâ¨deejay techniques part of their act. Here Deejay Shadow explains from theâ¨documentary, "Scratch."â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Scratch" DVD)â¨â¨SHADOW: The Pickles were the first to take the secrecy out of deejaying,â¨because a lot of hip-hop deejaying was based on covering the labels, so thatâ¨nobody knew what you had, not revealing your tricks, and I think the Picklesâ¨were the first people to just be, like, `Hey, here's exactly how to do what weâ¨do. We want you to go out and do it better so that we can learn from you.'â¨That to me was like--that was a giant step forward, and they were so far aheadâ¨of the time that people--a lot of times, crowds would just be like, `Yeah.'â¨â¨MILES: Doug Pray's first documentary, "Hype," chronicled the downfall of theâ¨Seattle grunge scene, but with "Scratch," he's interested in resurrection. Itâ¨seems to be part documentary and part instructional video. The message isâ¨that these guys are just like you. You could do this stuff, too, and we'llâ¨show you how. The young turntableists are very aware they have the homeâ¨basement and local neighborhood vibe that rap superstars spend big money toâ¨simulate in movies.â¨â¨"Wild Style" is an almost improvised movie that hoped to be historical.â¨"Scratch" is a movie that hopes to preserve the history of improvisation. Itâ¨includes a brief segment of "Wild Style" that features ground-breaking deejayâ¨Grandmaster Flash at work on the turntables. The new turntableists are moreâ¨studious, almost like a martial arts brotherhood, though they are just asâ¨likely to think of themselves as science-fiction superheroes.â¨â¨What a switch from the old school. The star of "Wild Style," Lee Quinones,â¨was not a professional actor, and he always looked like he was wondering ifâ¨this project was a good idea. After all, it might mess up his career as aâ¨graffiti artist. The turntableists have no such doubts as they display theirâ¨supple wrists and darting fingers on the mixing boards. They may not be atâ¨the top for long, but they will not be forgotten, and by the end of "Scratch,"â¨you will be convinced that the turntable has become a musical instrumentâ¨suitable for the long haul.â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Scratch")â¨â¨Unidentified Group: (Rapping) Come on, y'all. Come on. Yo! Now you knowâ¨us, but it's not the cold crush. Four MCs, so we ain't the furious. Not theâ¨Force MCs or the three from treacherous. Just a blast from the past from theâ¨moment we bust. For whatever we touch, we hope platinum plus, but if our shitâ¨go rust, still in God we trust. 'Cause it's the second coming, displayingâ¨rhymes so stunning and keep it running and give a shout out to London. Toâ¨keep it on, uh, let's still perform till the early morn, sunset till dawn. Iâ¨got a word abundance, hold pens by the hundreds. Top speed guaranteed. Weâ¨still run it. I be bombastic with my terror tactics. Why you acting plastic,â¨treating all your fans like fanatics? We be the upper pair coming air tightâ¨like Tupperware. Fuck a fear, press your luck and beware the brigadier. DJâ¨is spinning the records that make up the music, so people can focus wheneverâ¨the mic has been passed to me.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Milo Miles is a contributing writer to Rolling Stone. He reviewedâ¨the 1982 feature film "Wild Style" and the documentary "Scratch." Both areâ¨now out on DVD.â¨â¨(Credits)â¨â¨BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.