July 2005 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

The vulger, grandiose, pretentious, and stupid revised "Freedom Tower" proposed for the former World Trade Center site represents the antithesis of freedom. Instead of a ground floor that offers connection to the pedestrian life of the street, what you get is a gigantic blank-walled crypto-military fortification -- two hundred feet of steel and concrete bombproof bombast -- while the priapic tower above holds office workers hostage in the world's number one target for shoulder-launched missiles and other weapons of opportunity. What kind of sadist corporate CEO would ask his-or-her employees to work in the 49th floor of this monstrosity? What sort of desperate, cringing, soulless employee would consent to work there? What makes any of the idiots associated with this project, from Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Governor Pataki to David Childs, the architect from Skidmore Owings and Merrill, to the sycophants at the New York Times arts desk, think that we will even be able to run mega-structures like this one in an imminent future of worldwide energy shortages? The project should sink from the sheer weight of stupidity that has been heaped into it. It lacks the dignity of even a common bowling trophy. It's a disgrace to the city of New York and to the word freedom.