ardecila |
Feb 24, 2019 10:02 PM |
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Originally Posted by Busy Bee
(Post 8482715)
I love how absolutely no one was dogging on Santiago when he was the genius behind The Spire. Since that never happened, the go-to worst possible example is of course his PATH Transportation Center and Mall.
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Calatrava's had some reasonably successful projects, usually for private sector or nonprofit clients that embrace his vision but aren't circumscribed by labor and procurement rules, competing public agencies, corruption/graft, and plain old politics. His experience working with government agencies in the US is enough to disqualify him from the ORD project, and PATH is far from the only example.
These projects would likely go overbudget regardless of who was architect, but the complexity of Calatrava's designs and his famous unwillingness to compromise or value-engineer only compounds the problem. His buildings are also known for being wasteful with space. The Milwaukee Art Museum is an icon, but it pretty much failed at it's primary task of expanding the museum. Most of the new space is empty atriums and superwide hallways, with only one new gallery space IIRC. 90% of the art is still in the old building.
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One thing I do know for sure is though is that if the station was also the terminal for the city's premier airport express link to JFK, I doubt many would be hammering the issue of the budget quite as much. It's that the consensus seems to be that the utility of the structure is limited because in essence its a PATH stop, shopping center and pass through for the subway. That of course isn't SC fault, it's the city and PA's fault for not building a high speed JFK link to lower Manhattan.
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A rail link to JFK would have also provided a hefty revenue stream to help cover the cost of the ivory transit palace.
Most critics of the WTC Transportation Center are not reactionary conservatives who think any and all transit facilities should look and feel like a prison. But they are arguing that taxpayer money should be used wisely, and the WTC center fails that test in spectacular fashion, because of shitty management AND problematic design.
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