A look at the west Coast’s
World Trade Center Ground Zero, located in a lot in Los Angeles,
near Culver City (for the moment), makes for an interesting study
in the contrast between the two big American cities, their respective
landscapes, and the differing versions of culture that they represent.
Built as a set for Oliver Stone’s latest film, which is called,
simply, "World Trade Center," LA’s Ground Zero is a 1 to 1 scale
re-creation of the original, recreating one acre of the 16 acre
New York Ground Zero site. It was built on land that is part
of Howard Hughes’ old aircraft plant, which was intended to become
Dreamworks’ new movie studio, but has just remained a former
aircraft plant instead. This was where Howard Hughes took off
from for his last test flight, crashing his plane into a couple
of houses in Beverly Hills, nearly dying. Since the closure of
the plant, the hangars and open spaces have been used nearly
continuously as a film production location. It has housed everything
from the "Titanic" to the "Planet of the Apes." And now, Ground
Zero.
In New York, the Ground Zero is sort of negative space, a below
grade excavation - the city is a fully built three dimensional
landscape after all. In Los Angeles, land of surfaces, the pit
was simulated by building walls up from the ground’s surface,
creating a positive space. The walls, appropriately, are made
of stacked shipping containers, the architectural digits fashionable
to modernist designers, and in great supply, due to the Port
of LA/Long Beach’s imbalance of trade with Asia, a product of
our consumer culture.
LA's Ground Zero is made for a fictional film, while in NY Ground
Zero is an artifact, a documentary remnant from a real event.
In LA Ground Zero was intentionally and painstakingly created
from scratch, with new materials - crews built thousands of beams
out of styrofoam, and made contorted rebar out of foam rubber;
an additive process. In NY, the site was made by clearing away
waste material that had cluttered randomly on the site by the
chaos of collapsing buildings; a reductive process. Ephemeral
and transitory, the west coast Ground Zero will go away, while
the New York version will continue to be a sacred shrine. But
LA’s Ground Zero will have an impact too, a lasting impression,
as only big Hollywood movies can, and will have an effect on
our memories and history, whether we like it or not.
Like the original, the LA site is off limits to the public,
and heavily guarded. The film will be out in August, maybe by
September 11. In the meantime, at the moment, views can be had
from the bluffs above, between the gaps of some of the monopoly
homes of Westchester. |
