The September 11 terrorist attacks sparked a palpable sense of citizenship among New Yorkers in the days that followed, inspiring professionals from all walks of life to engage in public service at Ground Zero. Doctors and nurses volunteered medical assistance. Cooks brought food to rescue workers. Clergy of all faiths consoled the bereaved. As the initial rescue operation shifted to a recovery effort, crowds wanted to converge on Ground Zero to bear witness in an outpouring of collective grief. Access was limited to authorized personnel, leaving visitors to search the perimeter fence for glimpses inside—often crowding entry gates and slowing down cleanup crews. The barriers cordoning off the area quickly became inundated with memorials to the lost and expressions of gratitude for the city’s heroes. The site was chaotic.
The disorder triggered a sense of civic duty among architects who wanted to provide a dignified place to view the ruins without impeding the ongoing cleanup work. As a self-initiated temporary project, Viewing Platform was constructed in two weeks without any municipal funding, thanks to the unprecedented cooperation between several city agencies, private philanthropy, and volunteers. The thirty-foot-wide, three-hundred-foot-long structure was built at Fulton Street, slipping past Saint Paul’s Chapel and rising to a height of thirteen feet above the pavement to grant a panoramic view of the site. Viewing Platform was explicitly designed to be unmonumental: it used a limited palette of commonplace materials—metal construction scaffolding, four-foot-by-eight-foot plywood sheets, and wooden decking. Visitors quickly covered the plywood with handwritten notes and mementos, lending the structure the quality of a community bulletin board and offering an implicit riposte to the antigraffiti stance of Mayor Giuliani’s administration. Viewing Platform received as many as forty thousand visitors per day.
Viewing Platform was created in collaboration with David Rockwell and Kevin Kennon.
Albert Vecerka