7 New rebuilt World Trade Center plans to be revealed today @ 10am eastern

[DRoseDARs]

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Northeast...ing/index.html

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The agency overseeing the rebuilding of the 16-acre World Trade Center site is to unveil seven new land-use plans Wednesday that blend skyscrapers with memorials to the victims of September 11.

The new plans from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. are purported to be more dramatic and varied than the first set of plans, which met with lackluster public reaction over the summer. Seven new teams were chosen in October from hundreds that applied to devise new plans.

A series of presentations is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET in the World Financial Center, a group of office buildings next door to the WTC site. The seven new plans will be posted at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. site.

According to a source, common elements among the plans include:

• Tall office buildings rising as high or higher than the original twin towers.

• More than one tract for a memorial to the nearly 3,000 people killed in the terrorist attacks.

• A pedestrian promenade two-thirds of a mile in length going from the western side of the site to the southern edge of Manhattan.

• A terminal the scale of Grand Central Station that would unite dozens of subway and suburban train lines.

"People wanted to see the skyline restored; the skyline is restored by all seven teams," says Roland Betts, an LMDC board member involved in the design process. "The plans look terrific."

The LMDC has set a February 2003 goal for settling on a final land-use plan, either by tweaking one of the new designs or combining elements of several visions into one.

"I'm really anxious to know what resonates with the public," Betts said.

There will be no repeat of July's electronic town meeting attended by 4,000 New Yorkers. Instead, the LMDC will display the plans at the World Financial Center and online, and invite feedback through public hearings and e-mail.

There will likely be more than one proposal for the tallest building in the world, to exceed the 1,483-foot Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the 1,454-foot Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois.

"There are a lot of tall buildings," said one source familiar with the plans. "Some are memorials, some are buildings, some are both."

The guidelines for this round called for 6.5 million to 10 million square feet of office space, as much as 1 million square feet of retail shopping space, and a hotel.

Firms were told to avoid building on top of the acre-wide square "footprints" where the twin towers stood and to build no housing on the site.

A total of 32 design firms, individual architects and artists from the United States and four other countries made up the seven teams.

They included a pair of European firms -- Foster and Partners, from London, which built the German Reichstag building in Berlin; and Studio Daniel Libeskind, of Berlin, which built the Jewish Museum in Berlin and is building the Denver Art Museum.

"It's a project that touched me as an immigrant and as a New Yorker," said Libeskind, who came to America in 1959 with his sister and his parents, who were Holocaust survivors.

The signature of his plan is an office tower with dramatic skyline element rising a symbolic 1,776 feet, 416 feet more than the twin towers. He proposes six acres of memorial space and 8 million square feet of office space.

"It's about freedom, it's about America, and it's about New York, and how does the city move forward in the face of these tragic events," Libeskind said.

Among the better-known American architects involved are Richard Meier, who built the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, and Charles Gwathmey, who built the Guggenheim Museum addition and Morgan Stanley's headquarters in New York. They are collaborating.

"Our view is the entire World Trade Center is a sacred precinct, a place of dignity, a place of aspiration, a place of contemplation, and of hope and memory," Meier said.

The centerpiece of his plan is a memorial square with "fingers" extending into Lower Manhattan to symbolize the tragedy. "These events went beyond the site," Meier said.

His team would make three-quarters of the site an open space and would create multiple memorial sites, including pools of water and representations of shadows the towers cast at the moment they fell. Meier would build a pair of tall buildings standing 1,111-feet, but would not make them twin towers.

Another team is led by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which built the Sears Tower and is designing Manhattan's new Penn Station and the headquarters for AOL Time Warner, the parent company of CNN.

Skidmore is already building 7 World Trade Center, a 52-story tower for developer Larry Silverstein, to replace the destroyed office tower that stood just north of the 16-acre WTC site.

Silverstein had signed a 99-year lease for the Trade Center in July 2001 and pays $124 million to the site's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He is suing his insurers to collect billions of dollars earmarked for rebuilding.

"We have elevated public space to iconic status," said Roger Duffy, who will present the Skidmore plan. "We imagined in the future, cities like New York will be as dense or denser."

Their plan offers nine commercial buildings, each rising to 1,000 feet, or about 80 floors each, totaling 12.5 million square feet of commercial space.

It also calls for acres of public and cultural space inside the buildings, with open spaces inside at 140 feet, 280 feet, 750 feet, and 1,000 feet to be lit at night. Half of the site would be a reflecting pool. Three acres would be set aside for a memorial park.

The smallest firm competing is the husband-wife team of Stephen Peterson and Barbara Littenberg. The promenade, introduced this summer, was originally their idea.

"It could be the Champs-Élysées of New York," Peterson said.

The couple proposes new twin towers rising 1,400 feet with a public garden as the centerpiece. The footprints of the towers will be incorporated into the garden, which will be a memorial space.

The south tower footprint would be a pool, while the north tower footprint would house an amphitheater with the same number of seats as victims -- 2,792, in the city's latest count.

New York architect Frederic Schwartz, who is rebuilding the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Lower Manhattan, leads a team with members from Japan, Germany and England.

"It's dealing with the neighborhood," Schwartz said. "I live here. I walk out my front door -- that's where the towers were. But we recognize the global importance of what we're doing."

He said his team's plan balances density and open space. "It's quality and concept, not quantity," he said.

All teams received a stipend of $40,000 for their work.

"This has been an incredible -- every minute -- emotional project," Schwartz said. "You have a great responsibility to inspire."

[Kepler]

1. If the tallest building in the world plan is the one I've seen, it doesn't really count because about half of it's height is an antenna.

2. Is it myth or truth that one of the finalists is the same genius who came up with the "airplane" plan for Brasilia, and if so can we shoot him?

3. All of the plans on the official site were more or less ghastly. No chance they'll just tear them up and start over? Please?

[Eli]

Tall office buildings rising as high or higher than the original twin towers.

[orange]

will this be televised?

[VJ]

[Seeker]

This is no time to get cheap, tallest in the world!

It will show the world New York spirit.

[aahz_capone]

I think they should combine everything. They should have a huge ass terminal combing all the transport built underneath the tallest building in the world and on top of that building a permanently lit statue like the statue of liberty but different on top of the tower. The statue should a man standing tall holding the a model of the twin towers to his chest in one hand and the other hand should be giving the finger.

[Eli]

CNN has the 7 suggestions.

They are all great IMO. Especially the first one, but it's only my natural bias showing.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Tuomerehu

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Eli
CNN has the 7 suggestions.

They are all great IMO. Especially the first one, but it's only my natural bias showing.

Damn, none of these buildings looks special

[Eli]

Damn, none of these buildings looks special

You think so?

The 6th suggestion is boring, but all the others are amazing.

[Adagio]

I couldn't see anything special in those pictures. Maybe it was because some of the pictures were too dark, so I couldn't see the special parts of the buildings...

[Eli]

Well, the new buildings are going to be the highest in the world and that's enough for me.

[Edan]

Well, I saw the 7 suggestions and, for the most part, they don't inspire me I did take a liking to the United Architects one (the one that vaguely looks like a person raising his hand), and, to a lesser degree, the husband/wife team.

I remeber a while ago there was a proposed plan that had it's own website (that kinda looked like 4 giant double-a batteries next to each other) that looked pretty good - while I half think it was a hoax (although whoever made that website put in A LOT of effort for a hoax.), it seemed somewhat more inspiring, and some of the ideas from that could have been used.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Seeker
This is no time to get cheap, tallest in the world!

It will show the world New York spirit.

Silliness over common sense.

[Drake Tungsten]

The plan by the London team is the best one.

[Panag]

hi ,

they should build them back , bigger the before , then they should put a missile battery on top of it , .... crazy , well why not , ......

on each tower there should be a large heli platform , and they should be calculated to withstand the inpact of a 747 or airbus 4XX , .....

have a nice day

[JCG]

Make the exact same buildings, add an internal/external memorial. Why anything else?

[orange]

any link yet?

[Eli]

Orange :

The CNN main web page has a link.

[orange]

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Northeast...ing/index.html

I think most are pretty bad, certainly worse than the one i saw over the summer...but 5 is interesting the three towers with walkways is awful #2 isn't too bad either...

[Drake Tungsten]

#2 was my favorite. Seemed like a normal building, unlike some of those monstrosities. The one with the walkways was hideous!

[DanS]

I'll post the pics, once I get into the site.

[Amadan]

Originally posted by orange
any link yet?

BBC News has the pictures and a short article on them.

Look rather silly, esp. the first one.


EDIT: Sorry, missed the first post with a link to the pics.

[DanS]

Oops. The BBC is a good site. Refer to that.

[chequita guevara]

I like #1 and #4 and #5 a lot, but they really aren't NYC's style. While I like #6 (the one pictured above by DanS) the least by itself, I think it fits into NYC much better than any of the others.

[Arrian]

Edit: oh, yeah, the BBC pictures are much better. Hmm... none of them are that great.

I guess the Peterson Littenberg one is the best.

-Arrian

[DanS]

#3 (SOM) looks interesting in the following.

[Kontiki]

Yikes - time to go back to the drawing board.

#6 (Peterson/Littenberg) is the best of a really bad lot. NYC is about classic designs and clean, contemporary lines. Most of these are travesties.

[Cyclotron]

#3 looks like some kids' building blocks. I'll pass on the toddler look. I mean, look at 'view 3'... isn't that just remarkably out of place?

#4 is a memorial copout. Let's have a real building, folks, not some wierd allegorical scaffolding that makes us think of 9/11 all the time...

#6 looks... I dunno. Too much like the Empire state. It looks like towers on a bridge, not "tower" towers.

#7 gives me a headache. 'Nuff said.

So, that leaves 1, 2, and 5 for me.

On the plus side, at least they are making it bigger than before and not just making it one big memorial park.