The Centre of Attention

My girlfriend and I were having a spirited debate about the definition of gherkin the other day, which prompted us to turn to the final arbiter of such things, the world wide web. It's strange that this is where I turn for so much information these days, I can't imagine what life was like before it became so commonplace. Where did people get movie times? The newspaper? Really? How did you settle debates about who played the title role in Small Wonder? Books? I know that I'm just begging for someone to post a comment about how they had to walk 2 miles through snow up to their waist just to get the movie times when they were little, but it's amazing how indispensible the internet has become for me in my daily life.

So anyway, we turned to the internet to decide whether I was wrong in claiming that all of those little, bumpy dill pickles I like to eat are called gherkins, or whether some of these were not gherkins, or whether gherkins were some other thing entirely. As I'm sure you'll understand, the internet presented myriad sources supporting every possible side of the argument, so the debate still rages today. The gherkin googling did have at least one positive outcome, however. When I clicked on a link referring to an "erotic gherkin for London skyline" (how could I not?), I discovered that someone had built a huge new building in London since I moved away 4 years ago. It's called the "erotic gherkin" or simply "the gherkin" by many because of it's shape, which is like a pickle -- a cylinder that's tapered at both ends. It's also known as the "Swiss Re" building (the "Re" is short for re-insurance), it's largest tennant, but it's official name is "30 St. Mary Axe" which is also it's address in the financial district in London.

Being such a modern and more importantly, tall building in a city with so few buildings that have either attribute, it's drawn a lot of attention, both good and bad, from the press and the general public.

But tonight I went to a screening of a documentary that shows the horror of what happens when a building gets too much of the bad attention. Of course I'm referring to the twin towers of the World Trade Center that were destroyed in a single act of terrorism in 2001, just before I moved to New York. The documentary is entitled "Inside 9/11" and will be shown on the National Geographic Channel in two parts this weekend. They showed us a 70-minute version of the complete 4-hour program, but even from that I could tell how thoroughly they had reconstructed the events from the latest evidence. The recordings of the terrorists and flight crew aboard the planes are particularly engrossing. There's also quite a bit of backstory, tracing 20 or so years of the history of terrorism in the US and the lives of the perpetrators themselves in particular. There followed a panel discussion as well that was both chilling and informative and (perhaps because it was invite-only) surprisingly free of the pitfalls of most audience Q+A sessions.

I'm not going to try to say anything about whether we should continue to build or live in huge buildings, but I think that it's hard to deny that they end up being imbued with a lot of symbolic meaning. The WTC were seen as the embodiment of a certain sort of capitalist power by both the people that worked in them and tragically, by the terrorists that attacked them. Right now, various interested parties are waging a pretty vigorous debate about what sort of new symbol should be built in their place. Should we focus on remembering the tragedy or on the resilience and defiance of the American people? I think that in the end the developer is just going to ignore everyone and go with whatever makes the most economic sense for him, which seems somewhat appropriate, or at least closest to the original feel of the Towers. At any rate, it seems like whatever gets built there will mean a lot more to people than just a place to work or catch the PATH train. Sometimes a Gherkin isn't just a gherkin.