There and Elsewhere: Architecture and the Political Ecological City

In 2012, Aaron Betsky critiqued not only the newly redesigned One World TradeCenter (1WTC), but also the architectural aspirations in contemporary culture at large.His review offered a tepid “meh” in reaction to David Childs’s design, calling it “Notbad, not good, but just there.”1 But upon closer inspection, 1WTC is more than “justthere.” In fact, it is very much there—and, perhaps equally as important, elsewhere.The network of actors mobilized by 1WTC offers a glimpse into a more nuanced understandingof both architecture and the city. In this reading, political ecology offers atheoretical framework for explaining the imbrication of both human and non-humanactors in disparate geographies.

Volume Editors
Robert Corser & Sharon Haar

ISBN
978-1-944214-03-6