Impenetrable! Impregnable!

Of course the way to stand up to the evildoers and show we are not cowed is to rebuild — starting with an impenetrable 20-story concrete base — oh yes, that will show them:

Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled a radical redesign of the Freedom Tower planned in Lower Manhattan yesterday: a 77-story glass-clad skyscraper that would sit atop an almost impermeable 200-foot concrete and steel pedestal, sheathed in ornamental metalwork, overlooking the memorial intended to honor those who died at the World Trade Center.

The redesign was worked up in a matter of weeks after an embarrassing setback for the trade center redevelopment, when the New York Police Department deemed the first version of the Freedom Tower too vulnerable to attack by car or truck bomb.

The newly configured building would have no occupied space other than the lobby for its first 200 feet. It would be set at least 40 feet farther away from West Street-Route 9A, a heavily trafficked state highway. Many of its windows would be tempered, laminated and multilayered for extra protection against explosions.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement released after the unveiling that the “new design provides for a level of bomb blast mitigation consistent with the N.Y.P.D.’s report on the Freedom Tower and adequate to the threat” described in federal safety guidelines.

. . .

The first 30 feet of the 200-foot-tall pedestal would be completely solid. The next 50 feet would have some openings, allowing light to be brought into the lobby from above. The rest of the base would be occupied by four floors of mechanical equipment. Stainless steel, titanium or aluminum panels would mask the concrete wall.

Sounds lovely!

Meanwhile, Times Art Critic Nicolai Ouroussoff unsheathes his thesaurus and unloads, bemoaning the design’s “impregnability”:

The darkness at ground zero just got a little darker. If there are people still clinging to the expectation that the Freedom Tower will become a monument to the highest American ideals, the current design should finally shake them out of that delusion. Somber, oppressive and clumsily conceived, the project suggests a monument to a society that has turned its back on any notion of cultural openness. It is exactly the kind of nightmare that government officials repeatedly asserted would never happen here: an impregnable tower braced against the outside world.

. . .

The temptation is to dismiss it as a joke.

. . .

But if this is a potentially fascinating work of architecture, it is, sadly, fascinating in the way that Albert Speer’s architectural nightmares were fascinating: as expressions of the values of a particular time and era. The Freedom Tower embodies, in its way, a world shaped by fear.

. . .

Absurdly, if the Freedom Tower were reduced by a dozen or so stories and renamed, it would probably no longer be considered such a prime target. Fortifying it, in a sense, is an act of deflection. It announces to terrorists: Don’t attack here – we’re ready for you. Go next door.