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Towers 1, made from stainless steel, seen here against the sky.
-- Edward Tufte
In our thread on horizons I discuss Towers 1 as follows:
In a several Matisse works I saw today at Foundation Beyeler in Basel, a local horizon is created at the bottom of the painting (reading as the front in the painting's perspective) by table tops or 2 or 3 angular lines sometimes the ghost of table tops. (Recall the long discussion of Cezanne tabletops in Beautiful Evidence.) Just before I left home, I'd been working on exactly the same problem in the Towers sculpture display (note the angular base formed by 2 planes at the bottom Towers 1.
The top plane carries the towers and rotates against the lower plane creating the skewed semi-perspectival darker planes, as the whole thing sits on a tabletop. My Beyeler notes are filled with sketches of the Matisse skewed local horizons; perhaps it would be good to see some maps of those planes similar to the Loran maps of Cezanne in BE.
Appropriately, I'm showing and talking about some photographs of Towers 1 here at ArtBasel on Wednesday.
Towers 1 also of course is arrayed against a beautiful cloudy sky, the "back or main or upper horizon" (better term to come) and indeed the local horizon of the table tops is itself outlined by the upper horizon.
This account, it must be said, is after-the-fact since these particular visual effects were discovered in the trial and error process of the making Towers 1. The photographs were taken from below the plane of the piece so to express the lower local angularity and perspective as well as the big sky perspective.
The important analytical point is to think about multiple horizons, local and cosmopolitan. This is always an issue in placing a big piece in the landscape: what do you get locally (as on top of a rolling hill), and what do you get globally (as against the distant horizon of earth and sky)?
-- Edward Tufte
Perspectives
Apropos of horizons, I found the silhouettes seen from the angles of the second and third photos to bear a strong resemblance to sailboats. The second photo resembles, perhaps, a new and creative design for an America's Cup competitor, while the third photo suggests a traditional, single-masted smaller sailboat. It is a delightful work which is aesthetically pleasing from many perspectives, despite the extreme differences in appearance from each viewpoint and the consequently different associations invoked in the mind's eye.
-- Patrick Martin (email)
I missed the sailboat metaphor but it is certainly there.
My metaphor is a 400 feet tall version to serve as the 9/11 memorial instead of the currently planned voids. The stainless steel produces beautiful light and shadows, always changing with the sun and season; the piece stands out among the tall buildings and could be seen far away and flying over; it reaches up into the sky (like the pillars of light did in the very successful informal memorial); the bridge (of life) points up and forward; the piece does not attract mischief; and there would be exactly 2979 circles showing absence, each circle individually and uniquely identifiable with each death; and shadows of individual circles move around the piece with the light, the shadows projected over the entire surrounding area and buildings. The two WTC foundations remain, open and viewable, underneath the canopy of the stainless steel memorial.
Stainless steel requires little upkeep and always looks as good as it did when first constucted. The cost of this piece, whatever it may be, is surely a lot less than the currently projected $960 million for the void memorial.
The current version is 8 feet tall; scaling up will require some excellent structural engineering.
-- Edward Tufte
Frank Stella uses a Paris based engineering company called RFR.
Bandshell, Frank Stella, Miami http://www.rfr.fr/Pages/angl/projbank/472/472.html
Steel Projects http://www.rfr.fr/Pages/angl/proj/mater/steel.html
-- Tchad (email)
David W. Dunlap and Charles V. Bagli, "New Plan Unveiled for W.T.C. Memorial". New York Times, 20 June 2006.
Aaron Swartz's NYT link generator provided the permalink.
-- Niels Olson (email)
See Nicolai Ouroussoff on the ground zero memorial:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/arts/design/22zero.html
-- ET
-- Edward Tufte
-- Edward Tufte
Xu Zhou prepared this beautiful rendering of the Towers piece. The image captures some of the materiality and reflectivity of the sculpture. We can now set the rendering down in different contexts and eventually maybe we'll have a 3D tour around the piece.
Click on the image for a big file and scroll down to see many fine details, particularly the reflections on the base plane.
(click to see larger) |
-- Edward Tufte
In the photo below, the reflections at the right on the stainless steel base for the piece are the result of water wetting down the ground plane. Note the shadows, the overlapping shadows, and the complex reflections.
-- Edward Tufte
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