Petit at some 1360 feet up in the skies on 1974, World Trade Center
Long-time friends of mine will tell you that as a child, one of the very first things I asked to visit on my first day in New York City was the World Trade Center. I have the pictures to prove it (at the age of 9). With twice the fervor I had when I got to Cologne Cathedral in Germany at 6, I begged and pleaded my entire family to walk up to the very edge of the Twin Towers where I can gaze up the corner edge in disbelief.
It’s true that there continues to be many architects and armchair aesthetes who frown upon the minimalism of Minoru Yamasaki, a Japanese architect who was chosen to design the Twin Towers in the 60s. Not only do the Twin Towers pay homage to the gothic tradition among Manhattan’s skyscraper alumni – Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building – it weds both the past (the soaring vaults and naves of European cathedrals) to the future (dehumanized aspirations of the mechanized era). It’s two gorgeous monoliths of silver (my favorite color): think of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey 2001 monoliths as shimmering mirrors that terminate in gothic vaults after 110 floors.
In the same way as the music of Philip Glass, Philip Corner, and Steve Reich open gateways within mirrors, the minimalism of the Twin Towers were visual meditations on the ecstasy of repetition. For years since 9/11, I have been trying to elaborate on just what it was that made the Twin Towers my favorite building in Manhattan.
If you look at my favorite cathedral, The Cologne Cathedral, and then the WTC, you’d conclude I was a size queen even at the age of 6. Happily, someone has come to my rescue regarding my two beloved towers: Philippe Petit, who walked across the Twin Towers in 1974 is captured in a documentary that will be coming out on dvd on Dec 2008.
In the meantime, his book To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers is an absolute delight. Petit put into words the wonder one feels at the endless soaring towers of the World Trade Center. To this day, my latent image of Yamasaki’s work remains in the void. One of the most emotional photographs in Petit’s book is a shot of New Yorker’s gawking upwards from the street in awe.
When I watch the events of 9/11 and the violence of the passenger planes crashing into the towers, my disbelief and shock is assaulted by the intense hatred man and his religion is capable of. The beautiful shot of the first time New Yorkers looked up at the Twin Towers in disbelief restores, for me, the intense inspiration man and his art is capable of.
