On the tenth anniversary of 9/11 this past fall, much of the discussion of Ground Zero looked backward. But there is also a need to look forward and address the future of Ground Zero and Lower Manhattan. How will the redesign of the site and the struggles over its making affect the future of urbanism and development in Manhattan? Was the transformation of lower Manhattan already underway before the attacks on the World Trade Center? What role will memorialization play in the future downtown, in the context of broad economic and environmental change? Hear a distinguished panel discuss the future of—and from—Ground Zero. Participants include Dilip da Cunha, architect and planner, lecturer, Penn Design, University of Pennsylvania; Paul Goldberger, Joseph Urban Chair of Design and Architecture at Parsons The New School for Design and author of Up from Zero, about the Ground Zero rebuilding process; Paul Travis, managing partner and owner of Washington Square Partners, Inc.; and Christopher Ward, former executive director of the Port Authority. Moderated by David Scobey, executive dean of The New School for Public Engagement. THE NEW SCHOOL | http://www.newschool.edu Sponsored by The New School for Public Engagement."
Bio
Dilip da Cunha
Architect, city planner. Dilip da Cunha is a principal of the Philadelphia-based landscape, planning and architecture firm Mathur/da Cunha. The firm's work emphasizes the nature of landscape as a shifting as well as culturally layered condition. The firm's research and design work was recognized with a 2000 Young Architects Award. Da Cunha has authored numerous publications including Second Nature (Princeton Architectural Press, 2000), Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape (Yale University Press, 2001), and Deccan Traverses: the Making of Bangalore's Terrain (Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2006).
Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger has been The New Yorker's architecture critic since 1997. He holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at the New School. His books include "The City Observed: New York" and "Up from Zero: Politics, Architecture, and the Rebuilding of New York." His most recent books, "Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture," a collection of his New Yorker columns, and "Why Architecture Matters," came out last year.
David Scobey
David Scobey is the Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Community Partnerships and the inaugural Director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Until 2005 he was Associate Professor of Architecture in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and Director of the Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan.Â
Scobey holds a doctorate from Yale's Program in American Studies; a historian of 19th-century U.S. cultural and urban history, he is the author of Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape (Temple University Press, 2002). As Director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, Scobey is charged with coordinating Bates College's community-engagement initiatives and integrating them into the College's liberal-arts mission. Scobey brings to Bates a decade of work in the national effort for academic civic engagement.Â
\In 1997, he founded the University of Michigan Arts of Citizenship Program to foster the role of the arts, humanities, and design in civic life. He serves on the national advisory committees for Project Pericles and chairs the National Advisory Board of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life. His interests and areas of expertise in academic civic and community engagement includes: civic engagement in the arts and humanities; civic engagement in liberal arts education; and current trends in the national movement for academic civic engagement.
Paul Travis
Paul Travis is Managing Partner of Washington Square Partners, a real estate development advisory firm in New York City which he founded in 1994. Over the years he has worked with corporations, non-profit institutions and government entities to reconfigure real estate assets and solve land use issues. He is also a partner in Kingsbridge Development Partners, a real estate development firm which developed River Plaza, Bronx, New York, the first major private development in the Bronx in twenty years.
Since its inception, his firm has been responsible for several major redevelopment initiatives including, Moynihan Station Redevelopment, New York Historical Society, Downtown Brooklyn Redevelopment, Cooper Union, Harlem Park, River Plaza, Theater Row, Long Island City and Skyland Center in Washington, D.C.
Prior to founding Washington Square Partners, Mr. Travis served as Chief Operating Officer of Forest City Ratner Companies in New York City where he was responsible for the development and leasing of MetroTech Center, a 4.5-million-square-foot complex in Brooklyn, New York. He was also responsible for the development of the Loews Miami Beach Hotel, the first new convention center hotel in that City.
Mr. Travis had previously been Director of Real Estate for the Price Company and Senior Vice President of the New York City Public Development Corporation. At PDC, he directed the 42nd Street Development Project in Manhattan, New York and was responsible for commercial and industrial development projects throughout the City, including the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square.
Christopher Ward
Ward was born in Princeton, New Jersey, the son of Barbara Carnes Ward and John William Ward, a Professor of English and History at Princeton University who later served as President of Amherst College. He attended Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, earning a B.A. degree in 1976. He worked on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico before attending Harvard Divinity School, where he received a Master of Theological Studies.
Ward worked at the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs as Director of Research from 1982 to 1988. From 1988 to 1992, he was an Assistant Commissioner for the New York City Department of Telecommunications and Energy. He was Senior Vice President for Transportation and Commerce at the New York City Economic Development Corporation from 1992 to 1996.
Ward then worked in the private sector as Director of Business Development of American Stevedoring, Inc. from 1996 to 1997. From 1997 to 2002, he was Chief of Planning and External Affairs and Director of Port Development for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He then served as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection from 2002 to 2005.
Ward returned to the private sector, as CEO of American Stevedoring from 2005 to 2006, and then as Managing Director of the General Contractors Association of New York, Inc. (GCA). After New York Governor David Paterson recommended Ward to become Executive Director of the Port Authority, he was appointed to the position on May 22, 2008.
Ward is charged with overseeing the planned expansion of Pennsylvania Station to the James Farley Post Office, which will be named Moynihan Station. He attracted attention in July 2008 when he announced that construction at the World Trade Center site would run longer and cost significantly more than previously promised. He is also a survivor of the 9/11 Attacks. Ward was in building 5 when Tower 1 collapsed and was later rescued.
Paul Travis, Managing Partner of Washington Square Partners, displays concept designs for the World Trade Center Memorial at Ground Zero, including the chosen "Freedom Tower". Due for completion in 2013, Travis explains that the memorial will feature an open footprint of the Twin Towers and a museum built 70 feet underground.
Complex formerly consisting of seven buildings around a central plaza, near the southern tip of Manhattan. Its huge twin towers (completed 1970–72) were designed by Minoru Yamasaki (1912–86). At 1,368 ft (417 m) and 1,362 ft (415 m) tall, they were the world's tallest buildings until surpassed in 1973 by the Sears Tower in Chicago. The towers were notable for the relationship of their simple, light embellishment to their underlying structure. In 1993 a bomb planted by terrorists exploded in the underground garage, killing several people and injuring some 1,000. A much more massive attack occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, when first One World Trade Center and then Two World Trade Center were struck by hijacked commercial airliners that were deliberately flown into them. Shortly thereafter both of the heavily damaged towers, as well as adjacent buildings, collapsed into enormous piles of debris. The attacks claimed the lives of some 2,750 people. Thousands more were injured. SeeSeptember 11 attacks.
