Posted by  Hazel K on September 18, 2001 at 15:50:16:

In Reply to:  Re: If not here, where? (2) posted by Richard Haut on September 18, 2001 at 12:13:15:

Richard

This site itself puts the towers into a "Great Buildings Discussion"
not me. The decision that they were having presumably already been made. Not Famous, or Landmark or Most Visited but Great. Who decides
Great?

I think I made clear in a previous posting that all the buildings lost
a week ago - great or not - could not balance the loss of the six year old girl who I believe was on one of the top storeys. Of course the buildings were not "more important than the people inside them".

But nor were they just expendable containers for those people, for which mourning is not only irrelevant but inappropriate. It is clear that for many New Yorkers, Americans (and indeed others)those two towers meant something more - for example, read the posting below about the loss of the buildings from the Idaho mother whose daughter had nearly been killed twice at the WTC. If that isn't mourning, what is?

You are totally right that it is not the building that counts - but what it symbolises in the minds of the humans who know it - love, inspiration, pride, comfort ... hate, terror, death. Thank you for reminding me because it answers my question. I had thought that
because this architecture and design and engineering forum would best appreciate exactly what made the WTC towers great buildings, that it would be best able to regret their loss. Mistake. Because that is exactly what the professionals within the forum know - the towers as buildings. No more and no less. You can admire their external appearance or the way they collapse so tidily; with hindsight you can analyze and know better how to evacuate their inhabitants. And so you should, because that is your role and you need to do it very, very well. But you cannot, it seems, love them and so - mourn them. That is why, in the week of postings since last Tuesday the only person to show real loss for the "great buildings" is an Idaho mother
with no relevant professional experience at all.

Not here, then to find someone to share with me a small but real sadness that my beautiful towers are gone for ever. Rather, out there
with people who know little and care less about architecture or design - people who wouldn't know a "great" building if they saw one.

Who has got it right?

by those

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