Banksy: new World Trade Center shows ‘terrorists won’

Elusive British street artist Banksy, nearing the end of a month-long New York City residency, has launched a scathing attack on the new World Trade Center, calling it “a betrayal”, a “non-event”, and a design that “clearly proclaims the terrorists have won”.

Banksy published an opionion column on his website after it was rejected for publication by the New York Times, slamming the design of One World Trade Center, the 104-storey skyscraper scheduled to be opened on the World Trade Centre site next year.

“As a visitor staying in New York for the past few weeks, one thing has become very clear to me,” Banksy wrote. “You’ve got to do something about the new World Trade Center. That building is a disaster. Well no, disasters are interesting. One World Trade centre [sic] is a non-event. It’s vanilla. It looks like something they would build in Canada.”

He continued the building is so poorly designed it “clearly proclaims the terrorists have won”.

“Those 10 men [a reference to the al-Qaeda terrorists behind the 9/11 attack] have condemned us to live in a world more mediocre than the one they attacked, rather than be the catalyst for a dazzling new one.”

Banksy submitted the piece to the New York Times, which declined to publish it. “We couldn’t agree on either the piece or the art, so we did reject it,” said Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the New York Times.

The op-ed that appeared on Banksy’s site, she added, was “not exactly the same” as the one he submitted to the newspaper.

“The attacks of Sept 11 were an attack on all of us and we will live out our lives in their shadow,” Banksy continued. “But it’s also how we react to adversity that defines us. And the response? 104 floors of compromise?”

The 540m- tall building, co-developed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and The Durst Organisation, is being billed as “the tallest building in the western hemisphere”. Construction of the spire was completed in May.

The op-ed is not the first time Banksy has referenced the Sept 11 terror attacks. Earlier this month, he unveiled graffiti in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighbourhood depicting a silhouette of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers with a flower — an orange chrysanthemum singed at the edges — emerging from one of the buildings.

And the outburst probably will nit win him any fans in the mayor’s office, which is already irked by Banksy’s installations.

“Running up to somebody’s property or public property and defacing it is not my definition of art,” mayor Michael Bloomberg said when asked of the graffiti. “It may be art, but it should not be permitted. And I think that’s exactly what the law says.”

“The biggest eyesore in New York is not the graffiti,” Banksy wrote as the title to his opinion piece. “It’s under construction at Ground Zero.

“One World Trade declares the glory days of New York are gone. You really need to put up a better building in front of it right away. Or better still, let the kids with the roller poles finish it off. Because you currently have under construction a one thousand foot tall sign that reads — New York — we lost our nerve.”