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Latest design for 9/11 museum merges old and new
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-10 17:47 The architect Craig Dykers has been working since 2004 on the design of a museum building for the World Trade Center site. In the end, he realized there could be no more powerful a centerpiece than something Minoru Yamasaki designed 45 years ago.
Mr. Yamasaki, the original architect of the twin towers, added one instantly recognizable flourish to his otherwise Spartan design: trident shaped columns that created an arcade of almost Gothic proportion at the base of the buildings. Enough of these enormous steel tridents survived the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, that their silhouettes came to symbolize emergence from catastrophe. Two surviving tridents from the north tower, each almost 90 feet tall, will return to ground zero to be incorporated in the atrium of the museum pavilion designed by Mr. Dykers and his colleagues in the firm Snohetta, which is based in Oslo and New York. Their presence, the company said, is meant to "convey strength, fortitude, resilience, survival and hope." This, the latest of several designs for a cultural building at ground zero, was unveiled at a news conference on Tuesday as the seventh anniversary of 9/11 approached. The pavilion will serve as the entrance to the subterranean exhibition galleries of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center. As the only part of the museum that is above ground, the pavilion will be highly visible from the surrounding streets and from the landscaped memorial plaza and pools that will wrap around it on three sides. Though the broad outlines of the design have been known for some time, the unveiling on Tuesday provided and confirmed some key details about the $80 million pavilion, which is being financed by New York State. The keystone-shaped pavilion will range in height from 57 to 72 feet (roughly equal to a six-story office building). It will contain 47,499 square feet of floor area; 34,834 square feet devoted to public programs and museum functions, the rest to ventilating and mechanical equipment serving the underground museum, the nearby World Trade Center Transportation Hub and the No. 1 subway line. |
