![]() We imagine, too, that it confers a kind of detachment, an elevated perspective, far above combative street life. Here, though, broad expanses extend in all directions.Īnd what, finally, do we see? We generally associate great height with superior vision, with an ability to perceive what those below can only guess at. The street was seen by peering through strips of window. I recall the old World Trade Center observatory as cramped. Luckily, except on occluded days, all of this is quickly forgotten. ![]() Why, when at the museum we see actual exposed bedrock? Here the effect is of unenlightening, hokey artifice. Then comes a long walk through mock bedrock on which uninformative facts about the building’s foundation are projected. The point is quickly made, tediously emphasized, and accomplished to far greater effect next door in the 9/11 museum. Before you reach the elevators there are introductory galleries with walls of video screens showing fragments of interviews with construction workers, engineers and others, praising the new building and associating it with recollections of 9/11. It is meant to be an “experience.” Staging is crucial. But there is also a transparent circular area that you can walk on it seems as if you are staring straight down at the street below-and not at video screens mounted under the floor showing live images from outdoor cameras.īut clearly, the urban observatory is no longer the traditionally static platform equipped with mounted binoculars. Here, at the One World Observatory, there are no open-air sections and sensations of precariousness or vertigo are avoided, partly, perhaps, because of recent traumas. The transparent ledges add a sense that this immense and well-ordered world is also potentially precarious. In Chicago, because of the city’s history, the view lays out a map before our gaze whose regularities extend to the horizon and whose irregularities intrigue. The Chicago and New York examples are quite different. The Willis Tower in Chicago (formerly the Sears Tower) includes four glass boxes that protrude past the sheer edge of the building, providing the sensation of being supported in space. In Dubai, one observation deck at Burj Khalifa is on the 148th floor, more than a third of a mile high-including a portion that is outdoors. Many cities now have similarly elevated vistas, some with even more extreme offerings. (Hettema Group was the lead designer, with features created by Local Projects, Blur Studios and Mouse Trap. The company operating it, Legends, which has experience managing popular spectacles, is selling timed adult tickets for $32 (with an additional $15 for the tablet) up to a thousand visitors an hour can be accommodated. The observatory will, I think, quickly establish itself as a premier tourist stop, offering something not easily found, even at other observation points. From the top of the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, New York looks as it has only been seen in photographs from helicopters you can note its contours and contortions, its areas of thrust and repose, the way its harbor and rivers still pose as its lifeline, though it now has uncountable pulsing arteries. That is unfortunate.īecause when I return the next day, the cinematic unveiling reveals, through the windows, a magnificent north-facing aerial view of a great city. But some significant portion of the expected three million to four million annual visitors are bound to be stymied by weather and may not be able to try again. For a fee, a tablet is available that provides an interactive survey of the surrounding landmarks. There are compensations for such occasions, including four guides who are called “global ambassadors.” Each is stationed at the center of a ring of HD video screens that respond to the guide’s gestures, offering visitors high-tech surveys of the city.
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