Make Design Matter Again

Today is the anniversary of one of the worst attacks in our nation’s history, an event that 23 years ago sparked a change not only in our country’s consciousness, but in the way New York City builds. From the smoldering graveyard of Lower Manhattan, a consensus emerged that we would rebuild and we would do it well. We would construct a place that honored the dead and celebrated the living, forging a better downtown with architectural and design talent. 

What we did together was far from perfect, but it was purposeful in ways that mattered — in ways that we should think long and hard about as we consider how to put thoughtful and beautiful design back at the center of our post-pandemic city.

Bear with me for a moment while I mention a number of capable and serious people. This is not gratuitous namechecking but an attempt to acknowledge designers, planners and others who worked strenuously to get things right, even as they made plenty of mistakes. From the ashes of tragedy rose the phoenix of design, and imperfect as it was, it became manifest under the watchful eyes of Gov. George Pataki, his national ambitions, and his Port Authority; site design czar Alex Garvin and his master planner Daniel Libeskind; developers Larry Silverstein and Janno Lieber; and Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s team including Dan Doctoroff, Amanda Burden and many others, including yours truly; not to mention untold numbers of community groups, civic organizations and journalists. 

The World Trade Center site has been rebuilt with an enduring memorial landscape by Peter Walker and Michael Arad, an austere performing arts center by Joshua Ramus, and a commercial hub designed by giants like Richard Rogers, Fumihiko Maki and, someday soon, Norman Foster. Perhaps most notably, billions were spent on a transit hub by Santiago Calatrava, billions some felt should have been used to create express trains to Kennedy and Newark airports, living as we do in a society that has to make such choices.

Today’s design and urban planning ecosystem has tons of talent, to be sure, but far too infrequently do people in power truly listen to those who spend their lives thinking about how urban space can work better for our city’s people and their shared prosperity.

Last night, before that must-see debate between an eloquent vice president and a scowling lunatic, a few of us were treated to a debate at the Century Association among the city’s leading design critics. The program, entitled “Can Design Critics Still Make the City Better?”, attracted a full house with a designated survivor feel; should something have happened yesterday in the hallowed halls of McKim, Mead & White’s midtown mecca, few would have been left in the city to either design anything or write about it. Much of the conversation was about the late esteemed architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable and the massive crater her absence has left in the center of New York’s design cognoscenti. The discussion was imbued with melancholy and resignation as the participants bemoaned the financial and digital straits cultural criticism must now navigate. 

Architects themselves bemoan the fact that they are typically relegated by the political and financial establishment to the policy kiddie table. Often we are stereotyped as those who will privilege vainglorious forms over function, finance and fidelity to political expedience. Consequently, on project after project, the general gist goes like this: “I know you care about design…here’s a juice box and some chicken nuggets.” 

While I share the lament that we are treated as baubles rather than partners, we should consider the deeper reasons why the political establishment consistently tunes out the design establishment. When they listened to us in the mid-20th Century, they got urban renewal, the now-discredited history of replacing entire neighborhoods with architectural showpieces like Lincoln Center. Then, when they listened to us in the late 20th century and into the 21st, they got indulgent starchitecture that elevated individual celebrity at the expense of context, community, and common sense. Fool me twice, shame on me, fool me thrice, shame on you. 

As much as I bemoan the inability of our political and financial class to care about our built environment, build affordable housing and take seriously the need to rebuild Penn Station without dismissing substantive plans to do so as “pretty,” I would be remiss to forget why they stereotype us as they do. The body politic got burned when many in the design world lauded a multi-billion dollar shopping mall atrium downtown dubbed the Oculus, when a leading designer shrugged as hundreds of “guest workers” died building a spaceship in the sand and when so little to this day is done about the denigration of women and people of color in our field by “shitty men in architecture.” One cannot simultaneously bemoan irrelevance and fuel it — defeating the bad boy stereotype demands thinking and acting better, not as craven wannabe celebrities, but as thought leaders and honorable professionals who originate from every race, creed and gender to serve every race, creed, and gender.

Ada Louise wrote of Gotham: “When it is good, this is a city of fantastic strength, sophistication and beauty. It is like no other city in time or place. Visitors and even natives rarely use the words urban character or environmental style, but that is what they are reacting to with awe in the presence of massed, concentrated, steel, stone, power and life.” To feel that in this city again, we must summon urban character and advocate accordingly rather than blame forces beyond our control like capitalism and technology. In the aftermath of the pandemic, and in the face of rampant global warming and searing political division, we in the architecture world have a strong argument for why designing for the character, climate and culture of our communities matters, just as we did in the heady years after 9/11, despite our missteps. We need to wield that argument with strength, sophistication and beauty, unlike the days when we flew the flags of urban renewal and star architecture. We got it wrong twice already, and we can’t afford to get it wrong again. There is only one strike left.