good design – not!

[Trace One]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/nyregion/at-9-11-memorial-police-raise-suicide-fears.html?ref=nyregion#comments

[Tosh K]

I’d have to assume that this was part of the design consideration.

[Jason T. Radice]

Lots of other stuff around there that would do the same thing. Buses, subway, bridges, the Hudson…

 

[Justin W. Lee]

this sounds a little evil but in a way its fitting with the concept of what happened that terrible day anyway

[nca]

Read half the article, but I think I get the gist. It raises some of the points someone made in the post last week on the AIDS Memorial regarding the trend since Maya Lins AIDS memorial to conceptualize very solemn, depressing places. Is it because grief is our most commonly accessible and powerful emotion? I might argue that joy is. So why aren’t there more ‘celebration of life’ memorials?

I actually like the original 9/11 concept where visitors could go below and behind the falling water. I thought that imagery was extremely powerful and contextually appropriate albeit incredibly gloomy.

The watered down version that we got, to me, carries far less significance.

Now, regarding potential for suicide? Are the ‘falls’ really that high? And isn’t there a pool of water at the bottom, albeit shallow? Seems like someone would have to be really motivated to end their life, which if that were the case there’s really not much we can do is there?

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

I have not been there, but it has always bothered me that it seems to celebrate the holes. I hoped for something more Pheonix like to celebrate moving forward. In that regard, I see how it could intensify the depression many feel from the event.

[Thomas J. Johnson]

3 stories into a pool of water is hardly a “sure thing”… Police Raise Fears of Suicide “Attempts” might be a better title of the article… You’d probably just hurt yourself really badly…

[steve phillips]

TraceOne, regarding the article, that just read as filler or a total non-story to me.  Caption should read:  “Could Be – But Isn’t”.

 

Regarding the design,

I have not been there so, can’t really say, but it LOOKS like, it recognizes the event and stops there.

I agree with some other posts that I would have liked to see some message beyond the event.  Such as, “It happened, but we are strong and resilient”.

 

It is not BAD, but I believe an opportunity was missed to say something more than, “This is were we got bombed.”

[Trace One]

I think I see the article more as design criticism from the perspective of the cops. This site is not just a bus, a street, a tall building  in Manhattan, any one of which can be used to commit suicide. It is a site designed for people who have suffered a loss, perhaps, to some, a devastating loss that they have not recovered from yet. (actually that would apply to the entire country, in a lot of ways, if  you consider the resulting tragedies of the Iraq War, Abu Graib, torture, wiretapping of citizens, loss of habeus corpus rights, as well as financial devastation, which some economists place a large portion of the blame on the  war in Iraq.). Anyway, if we care how cops see the world, they see this as a site where sad people will come to, with a design that may push them, literally and figuratively over the edge, with it’s sadness and hopelessness in addition to it’s three story fall.

 

So in as much as you want to listen to cops about design, I think it is worth a listen. Perhaps it is also, for the cops, just a gut response – it’s sad and depressing. Makes me want to kill myself.

Amazing how much work went into trying to get a good design for this site… IMHO, it was way premature. It takes years to absorb a tragedy, decades. And another tall office building – very stupid, again, IMHO..

[Author]

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