Laffoley's GaudiOver at Tyler Green’s house, a long series of posts about art responding to 9/11 is underway. So I thought I’d make a little contribution by way of discussing pre-9/11 work that may provide a vision for a post-9/11 world. In 1908 architect Antoni Gaudi began working on a project called Hotel Attraction for the site which later became the World Trade Center. The hotel, conceived while Gaudi was working on La Pedrera, was abandoned before construction began. The project was unknown to the public until 1956, when one of Gaudi’s assistants produced a set of plans for the 360 meter tall building. There is also another strange connection between Gaudi and Ground Zero. Gaudi was arrested on September 11, 1924 (77 years before the attacks on the World Trade Center) by the totalitarian Spanish government for celebrating the National Day of Catalonia.

Now some, including Gaudi followers and visionary artist Paul Laffoley, have proposed that the hotel finally be constructed on Ground Zero. The concept has some interesting implications — in Laffoley’s words, bringing back “architectural ghosts” to create “utopic space“: “It is not Time that heals, it is the Spirit of History.” Rather than dwelling on the traumatic moment, perhaps we ought to reach back and negate that moment with an unrealized possibility from the past.

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