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Their New York Vision
Students rise to serious challenge of redesigning WTC site
by Emily Weinstein - June 2002
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8:23 a.m. City College's Great Hall is empty and waiting for its guests. 115 fifth- through-tenth graders are on their way from all over the city. The huge, vaulted room swallows up sound and amplifies footsteps. Ten scale models of the former World Trade Center towers stand sentry on the work tables, dwarfing the Styrofoam cutouts that represent the Great Hall at the same scale. These massing models are there to give the students an idea of the size of the towers, so when they make their own designs for what should go on the site, they understand how big the Trade Center was. The hush in the marble, wood and stained-glass room is churchlike. As Executive Director Lorraine Whitman puts it, the space is a "secular cathedral." 9:14 a.m. The students start to arrive. They crowd the stage to pick up their t-shirts and sit down to wait for everyone to assemble. 9:45 a.m. The volunteers--15 architects and engineers--gather and are briefed on their responsibilities for the day. Firms and organizations with a long-standing relationship to Salvadori are represented at the event, including our Charrette co-sponsor, the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS). ICIS is a multi-university collaboration funded by the National Science Foundation. "It was exhilarating to see the many designs [the students made] to mend the devastation of September 11," ICIS director Rae Zimmerman later said. "Educational events like Charrette are part of ICIS' mission to promote the development of economically, environmentally and socially sustainable infrastructure." 10:07 a.m. Architecture Professor Alan Feigenberg, Salvadori Board Vice-President and longtime Charrette Grand Marshal, explains the design challenge and breaks the students and volunteers into groups. They will spend the next six hours designing, building and presenting models for what should go on the site of the former World Trade Center. 10:15-11:45 a.m. PLANNING Each of the ten groups begins by sketching and discussing ideas. Some groups use a roundtable format where each student presents his or her idea to the group. Others brainstorm possibilities, making huge lists they later pare down. As they plan their designs, a set of themes emerges, to which the groups will continually return. Most emphasize safety and structural integrity as features of a multi-functional space, combining memorial, educational, entertainment and commercial aspects. "A cone would be good in an earthquake," suggests Tecumseh, a seventh grader at The Renaissance Charter School (TRCS). The volunteer at his table, Nanci, of Hinman Consulting Engineers, agrees. The students are creative in their thinking about how to memorialize the victims of the attack. Eavesdropping on one table, I hear Bertslain, another TRCS student, saying, "What I was thinking was two bridges going diagonally, so you can go between buildings, and where they intersect, there are two wishing wells, one for the rescue workers, one for the victims." At the end of the design phase, Jeremy, an architect volunteer from Kohn Petersen Fox, asks each student at his table to present his or her ideas. All of these will be assimilated into the final model. "When architects create good drawings," Jeremy tells his group, "their message is communicated immediately. Well-designed buildings also do that." Gabrielle, a seventh-grader from I.S. 27 in Staten Island who lost her uncle in the attacks, comes up with a memorial that is at once innovative, simple and elegant. In her design, people who lost family members would bring rocks inscribed with their loved ones' names to the site, forming a rock garden. Nathaniel, an Ella Baker student, offered the stark metaphor of a literally wounded building-as-memorial. He drew, and then built, a dent into the new tower, to "remember where the planes hit." The memorial, he thinks, will occupy the dented floors. More traditional memorials also abound, from statues to wells to walls. 11:45 a.m. 30 pizzas are delivered and rapidly consumed. Gallons of soda are guzzled, fueling the hours of building ahead. 12:15 p.m. BUILDING The raids on the supply table are somewhat controlled by having students "buy" materials with tickets they've been issued, lending an element of fiscal responsibility to the project. Available for purchase are 33 cardboard cones, 17 empty beverage containers, 23 plastic berry containers, 25 boxes of PermoplastÔ modeling clay, 50 Styrofoam spheres, 44 empty boxes, 18 toilet paper rolls and countless pipe cleaners, rolls of shiny black paper and other odds and ends. Cutting, gluing, taping and the jamming of pipe cleaners into Styrofoam spheres begins in earnest. The Great Hall becomes a buzzing hive of organized chaos that would put many offices to shame. The models and voices of the children rise up from the brown paper-covered tables, echoing in the rafters. Many buildings include an educational component-a museum, library or combination of the two. One group is including an interactive oral history museum "Where people could come and record their stories and other people could listen to them," says Davone, of the Ella Baker School. Sahara, of M.S. 222, The Mario Salvadori School of Engineering and Architecture, applies tape with great deliberation to a library model. "The children's area is on the bottom," she explains, "and the top is for grown people." New York City students are nothing if not economically savvy. Many groups are including shopping centers, movie theaters and amusement parks. When I ask why, "to help the economy" is as common an answer as "to make people happy." With the models nearly finished, everyone begins munching cookies and signing T-shirts, creating a memento of the day. 2:52 p.m. PRESENTING The models are gathered on the stage for presentation. Each group reads from their "New York Vision" summary and explains the features of their model. The children's designs are on a markedly more human scale than the original towers were, and they use the space to create joyful communities. Nearly every group that built new twin towers has connected them with a bridge, and included new transportation systems to link them to the rest of the city. Multiculturalism is built into the designs. Many groups include food courts "with food from all over the world." Across the board, green space is a priority. The students are naturally sensitive to the delicate nuances that face the real re-designers of the site. They handle the tension between moving on and memorializing gracefully. "We mainly wanted to get life back to normal," says one group. "To remember the towers but not to think we're being haunted." The teachers then present the model they've worked on all day, completing a day of transformations. Teachers have become students, architects and engineers have become teachers, students have become designers and builders, and a former landmark we've come to know as ground zero is becoming a place to build again. Comments? Questions? Email emily@salvadori.org |
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Salvadori Center wishes to thank our generous volunteers, who made Charrette a wonderful day for everyone:
We are also so grateful to our teachers and participating schools:
And people who donated materials:
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