As I was unable to visit the link from the blog, I searched and found the following site:

http://www.op.net/%7Ejmeltzer/Gaudi/hotel.html

There is also an article, with an image of the proposed hotel in situ:

http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/gaudihotelshort.html

At the moment, I definitely prefer this to the design that was chosen.

Looks like something from the Gernsback Continuum.

The Gaudi design is wonderful, no question. I'd love to see it built somewhere in lower Manhattan. But for a memorial, well, it seems to me there are two approaches for replacement buildings: buildings that contain no outward sign of what once stood on the site and what occurred there, and buildings that in some way embody what happened while trying to transcend it. It's absolutely understood that both approaches are or should be primarily intended for moving forward, for getting on with life.

But I think outwardly ignoring what happened in this case is not a collectively healthy thing to do. It risks among other things the eventual forgetting of the visceral reality of 9/11. Everyone who was there or who went there later said it: you can't know how monumental this disaster was unless you go to ground zero. No amount of watching instant replays on TV will do it. A century from now, when we are all dead, our great-grandchildren will only have the replays on TV -- unless we can create a memorial that captures the sheer monumentality of the disaster.

In the Garden Steps design (see the WTC thread in the PR folder), the empty wells are the exact cross-sectional shape and size of the towers, and the walls are covered with a duplicate of the original tower facades. If you were standing at the bottom of the deeper well, it would look like you were standing at the bottom of a hollowed-out trade center tower, looking up to where, 30-odd stories up, it was ripped away onto open sky. In that vast well, you would know to the marrow of your bones -- and our great-grandchildren would know, viscerally -- just how monumental this disaster really was. But this is counterpointed by the staircase embracing the wells, the steps covered with gardens and bursting with life.

I think we need to embrace the emptiness that can never be filled and move onward and upward in the full knowledge of what's happened and who we now are as a result. A clear-eyed sense of where we've come from and where we stand now helps us to see more clearly the full range of options on the roads ahead.

I'll tell you, though, I wish we could have both -- the Garden Steps and the Gaudi Hotel.

Ron Drummond

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/cityscape.html

About fourty years ago, the astounding and lovely Penn Station was torn down. An atrocity that helped lead to the preservation movement.

The current Penn Station, cattycorner from the old site, is a utilitarian rat-maze.

Above it: The new, mediocre Madison Square Garden.

Across the street: The run-down husk of the old Hotel Pennsylvania.

North and South: Non-descripts.

I'd tear them all up and put the Gaudi skyscraper right there. The ground floors and basement would have the New Old Penn Station.

There'd be plenty of room in there for a new Hotel Pennsylvania and Madison Square Garden.

Up top, a rotating 90 terawatt anti-aircraft death ray, cuz' no one f**ks with my home town.

Stefan Jones