A bitter dispute over architecture, power and money overshadows efforts to replace the Twin Towers, writes Conor O'Clery
Daniel Libeskind exudes an intense energy and an impish charm. Dressed in black like an off-duty priest and with glasses like swimming goggles, the diminutive Polish-born architect enthuses about his great project, the 1,776ft tower that will arise where the World Trade Centre once stood. It will be "a point of reference for all the people of New York", says Libeskind as he greets a group of foreign correspondents in New York this week.
With his concept of a narrative building honouring the dead and celebrating life, Libeskind beat nearly 500 entrants in an international competition to replace the Twin Towers. His plan called for a rising spiral culminating in a Freedom Tower, an asymmetrical spire mirroring the curve of the nearby Statue of Liberty's upraised arm and torch.
But last Wednesday, three days before the third anniversary of the collapse of the Twin Towers, a remarkable documentary called Sacred Ground (shown on Channel Four on Monday as The Fight for Ground Zero) aired in the US. It revealed how, shortly after his work began, Libeskind was confronted with a ruthless takeover of the project by the site's developer and his architect, a powerful figure with fundamentally different ideas of how a skyscraper should look.
The epic drama that followed was captured by Frontline, a Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) programme that set out initially to record the realisation of Libeskind's vision and ended up chronicling a vicious war involving money, power and architectural egos.
Developer Larry Silverstein paid $3.2 billion for a 99-year lease on the site shortly before the 9/11 attacks and, as he frankly acknowledged to Frontline, he never, despite the competition result, considered Libeskind as the main architect for the new tower. The developer instead gave the project to David Childs from the huge architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with instructions to maximise profits. Childs, a prolific corporate architect who designed the harshly-reviewed Time Warner building in Manhattan, drew up plans for a commercial tower soaring to over 2,000ft, a third higher than the Empire State Building.
"David Childs believes in the skyscraper as a rational object; the structural idea should come first," said Paul Goldberger, architecture critic of the New Yorker, while Libeskind figured that "it was the role of the engineer to make the idea of the architect possible".
Libeskind was horrified by Childs's tower, which he said would dwarf everything around it. He protested that his visionary masterplan, which had been displayed with great fanfare to mostly-approving New Yorkers, was being shredded.
New York Governor George Pataki, a Republican presidential aspirant whose credibility was tied to the project's success, appointed Roland Betts, a New York developer and close pal of George W Bush, to mediate. Betts came to the conclusion that Libeskind was a "sweet guy" and was being badly treated. "I thought people would behave better," he said, "but they behaved like [expletive\]." He found that neither architect wanted to give an inch or to share ideas, and that they were now designing two different towers. Emotions ran high and bitter feelings began to fester.
Libeskind's wife and business partner Nina dismissed Childs as "not capable of great architecture", and accused the opposite camp of lying.
BETTS OVERRULED A plan by Silverstein to move the tower and to erect a second above the train station, but his authority was limited. In spring 2003, as the project slipped behind schedule, Pataki had to order the two architects to co-operate. They were put in a room together to work out a deal. It was a brutal encounter. Nina Libeskind angrily told the Frontline reporter that Childs had informed her husband, "I have no intention of working with you, I have no intention of doing your building, I have no intention of doing the Freedom Tower, I couldn't care less about the Statue of Liberty, I couldn't care less about how you feel about that site." Under pressure from the governor, Childs agreed to an arrangement whereby he would take Libeskind as a minority (51-49 per cent) collaborator, a meaningless gesture allowing Childs himself retain total control.
"Michelangelo and Pope Julius II made the Sistine Chapel," said Pataki, putting on a brave face in public. "Just think what Libeskind and Childs are going to come up with for the Freedom Tower!" Complicating matters, Childs already had another collaborator, a structural engineer called Guy Nordenson who had designed a torqued tower to rise from the irregular footprints of the Twin Towers. Though it also drew inspiration from the Statue of Liberty, Libeskind dismissed it as a "stick-alone tower, nice in Singapore and Shanghai." Childs said it would be iconic, sculptural and would "catch the wind", allowing the top to incorporate a windmill that would provide 40 per cent of the building's electricity. Despite its monstrous height, it would have no floors on the upper levels: few people in post-9/11 New York wanted to work high in an iconic building.
Pataki pressed for a resolution so he could lay the cornerstone before the Republican National Convention came to New York in September, but he was up against a powerful, profit-driven developer who was paying for the building and claimed the absolute right to choose the architect. He set a deadline of December 15th for agreement but Childs and Nordenson pushed ahead with a tower of 2,100ft that would overwhelm Libeskind's poetic symmetry. Libeskind, most famous for the acclaimed Jewish museum in Berlin, complained he had been "kind of expelled" from Childs's offices, but vowed, "I don't intend to sell my soul". Roland Betts called Pataki to warn him he would look like a "jerk" if he tried to present the Childs-Nordenson tower to the public. A final meeting of the protagonists was called, at which the diminutive Libeskind dug his heels in. The tower must be 1,776ft tall and topped by a spire mirroring the torch on the Statue of Liberty, he insisted. The developer's architect refused to budge. Next day, Pataki called Childs himself. According to Nordenson, he told the architect he would go along with the new twisted shape but the height should be reduced to 1,500ft and a spire added that mimicked the Statue of Liberty, bringing the height to 1,776ft. Childs could not risk open confrontation with the governor. He accepted the compromise, Nordenson resigned and Silverstein conceded partial defeat. "The plan was always to have it 1,776ft in height," the developer insisted.
PATAKI LAID THE cornerstone of the Freedom Tower on July 4th this year, promising an edifice "that will reclaim our glorious skyline, a tower that will honour the heroes we lost on this sacred ground." Libeskind, Silverstein and Childs stood unsmiling behind him. The new design, for which building will not begin until money is budgeted and tenders are completed, was not well received by the critics. Paul Goldberger called it a "sad compromise", a committee-designed "camel" of a tower, as unrealistic as a painting on which Matisse and Dali collaborated. But Libeskind was upbeat in his meeting with correspondents this week, just before the first showing of Frontline. "We've made tremendous progress, given the complexity of the project, given the emotions that are involved in this project," he said, though work on Ground Zero has yet to begin.
"The development of Ground Zero is on track, on schedule, and I think people in New York, in America, and the world will see results within four or five years." Everything had now been agreed, he said, including the positioning of buildings, the creation of streets and major spaces, the erection of a memorial with the naked slurry wall symbolising the strength of democracy and the Freedom Tower with its relationship with the Statue of Liberty. "This is not a Pollyanna tale," hesaid, declining to comment on the fact that he is to sue Silverstein for payment. "But I have to tell you, I never thought of ever walking away from this project. I never thought, 'now, I've had it. It was so horrible. I'm leaving. It's too much for me'." More battles lie ahead as the plans get tweaked. How would he now categorise his collaborative relationship with Childs, I asked Libeskind. "Well, there were high emotions," he said. "In the heat of the moment, many things happen. But as, you know, Shakespeare had it, I think, right. All's well that ends well."