The Raptor has Landed

SUBHEAD: The result is a sterile, boring, vacant chamber for Wall Streeters to throw parties.

By James Kunstler on 1 March 2016 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/eyesore-of-the-month/march-2016/)


Image above: Exterior of WTC Transportation Hub under construction looks like robot raptor. From original article.

Behold the Eyesore of the Month! And hail architect Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub on its grand opening this month.

Starchitecture’s latest bowling trophy is less huge (yuge-uh!) than it looks. Check out the scale of construction vehicles at it’s beak end (or is that cloaca?)

[IB Publisher's note: Cloaca, (Latin: “sewer”), in vertebrates, common chamber and outlet into which the intestinal, urinary, and genital tracts open. It is present in amphibians, reptiles, birds, elasmobranch fishes (such as sharks), and monotremes. A cloaca is not present in placental mammals or in most bony fishes.]

The cost if this extravaganza is $4-plus billion according to Business Insider (http://www.businessinsider.com/wtc-transportation-hub-is-4-billion-2014-12).

It is not, by the way, New York City’s main train station. That distinction is shared by the enduringly grand Grand Central Station as well as the subterranean latrine known as Penn Station.

This new “hub” is just an entrance to the Jersey-bound PATH trains and a bunch of converging NYC subway lines that boil down to it being the city’s “18th-busiest subway stop” (according to the NY Times) – which isn’t saying a whole lot.

No doubt the project was cooked up in the same spirit of paranoid jingo-narcissism as the grandiose piece of shit known as “Freedom Tower” that was put up in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to provide a fresh target for the aggrieved peoples of the world.

Below is the acclaimed interior, dubbed “the Occulus” — a reference to the skylight on the raptor’s curved spine.


Image above: Interior of WTC Transportation Hub event space looks like an ice hockey rink. From original article.

The result is a sterile, boring, vacant chamber (soon to grow dingy) for Wall Streeters to throw parties (a.k.a. an “event space.”)

Remember - history is a prankster. With the banking and finance system heading south this year, and the political parties blowing up, and the USA heading into a terra incognita of social disorder, imagine how the raging 99-percenters will treat the partying Wall Streeters in their event space.

 Duck and cover, Goldman Sachtsers!

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