i think scheme 5 is the most effective, despite loosing the fallen tower outlines. but the monument is too small. what's nice about it is how formal the surrounding buildings are. they face the square and seem to bow down to the monument in reverence. this makes the arrangement of those four smaller office towers seem like a monument to the site in themselves. the extra tower sitting off to the side just seems like an excuse to fit a couple hundred thousand extra feet of GLA on the land with out seeming superfluous. well, it seems superfluous to me.
i think the designers could have done amuch better job varying the heights of the buildings in each scheme and connecting them visally or stylistically in a similar way to Scheme 5. if built in 20 years, people will go by any one of those schemes and not even think of them as the location of a memorial. they'll just blend in with the skyline. which is a shame.
there needs to be some sequence of events, some unravelling of the site as you approach is which evokes those same feelings of mystery or even confusion that most of us felt on Spet 11. none of these plans accomplishes that.
we'll see if they can do better before the deadline in December.
Take Two....
