Santiago Calatrava may love New York, but New York does not love Santiago Calatrava back. Already suffering from the blow of having his visionary tower at 80 South Street pass on to the great beyond, the Spanish starchitect continues to lose more and more pieces of his planned PATH station at the World Trade Center. Back in April, we said the situation at the WTC was getting awkward after Calatrava's bird-like design got clipped twice and reconfigured once. And that was before the street-level perimeter was scaled back, the retractable roof got canceled and another round of delays were announced. Now, the latest insult to Papa Cal: The Times' David Dunlap reports that Santi's idea for a "vast underground mezzanine free of columns" is the latest design element to be called into question. To save money, the proposed alternatives call for standard column-and-beam construction, which apparently doesn't upset the Trav. He said in a statement, "In its revised state, the project retains all of its fundamental beauty, and the adjustments make it an ever-more-functional and coherent facility that will serve New York well in the years to come." Nice guy. He wrote that press release in his own blood, by the way.
· Transit Hub Design May Be Simplified [NYT]
· Curbed's WTC PATH Station coverage [Curbed]
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