When Arts Organizations Drive Their Own Designs

“Two projects — the Elbe Philharmonic Hall in Hamburg, Germany and firstsite:newsite in Essex, England — share a cultural thread: The arts organizations that will occupy them drove the design and development. By contrast, the arts organizations at the World Trade Center site have had to sit by and wait — or drop out — as plans evolved around them. The difference in this approach to a city’s cultural life will be made manifest in short order.”