What happens when the plumbing no longer works?
Michael Arad’s design for the 9/11 Memorial is beautiful. As I noted yesterday, it’s extraordinarily effective, especially when the light is golden and the surroundings are still. The sound of those waterfalls is eerie.
But what happens when the plumbing no longer works? What will this memorial look like centuries from now? (Or decades from now, depending on what you think about Peak Water.) Ever since I first saw Arad’s design for the memorial, I’ve been wondering about that. Fountains? Plumbing? This is not a recipe for an eternal monument, or even a particularly long-lived one. Imagine this without any water:
I’m thinking it’s going to be a great big black pit. I wonder what Albert Speer would say about the aesthetics of that.
2 Responses to “What happens when the plumbing no longer works?”
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Jeff says:
I’m sure the water sounds very pretty, but my thirty years in construction makes me scream..
“Sewer Drain!!”
And, by the way, no grate. Always trouble.
September 16th, 2011 at 11:57 pm EST -
Violet Socks says:
Bless your heart, Jeff. I would really much rather talk about architecture than politics.
The thing does remind me a little of the French drain outside the basement of my house in Maryland. When viewed from a distance it also reminds me of a shower pan. It reminds me a lot of a shower pan.
