Posted on 12/18/2002 1:10:20 PM PST by new cruelty
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Celebrated international architects presented new designs on Wednesday for rebuilding the site of New York's World Trade Center, including four proposals for the world's tallest structure.
The nine different visions are similar in that they all have a mass transit hub, retail and commercial space, museums and cultural institutions, a tree-lined boulevard and gardens and memorials to the 2,800 victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks that toppled the twin towers.
"The plans are innovative and varied," said Louis Tomson, president of the New York agency overseeing the planning. "It's no accident that every plan attempts to reclaim our skyline as a powerful symbol, that every plan respects the footprints (of the twin towers) as memorials and as cultural space."
The unveiling of the concepts at the World Financial Center's Winter Garden across the street from the 16-acre hole where the towers once stood, was the second time in five months that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation offered potential designs for public discussion.
In July, six concepts for the site were rejected by the public as dull and uninspiring.
The corporation went back to the drawing board and in September selected some of the world's best known architects to come up with new concepts. They included Norman Foster's Foster and Partners of London, which designed the new German parliament in Berlin, Studio Daniel Libeskind of Berlin, designers of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and the Getty Museum architect, American Richard Meier.
Models of the new plans will be on public display in the Winter Garden from Dec. 20 through Feb. 3. Conventions for the public to give their opinions are scheduled for Jan. 13 and Jan.14 and the designs can also be seen on web sites http://www.LowerManhattan.info and http://www.RenewNYC.com.
MASTER PLAN
In February, the Manhattan corporation will recommend a master plan, which could be a compilation of the nine designs. A separate international design competition will be held for the victims' memorial, to be selected in September 2003.
Among the four designs that proposed one or two skyscrapers or structures to become the world's highest, was Libeskind's idea that envisages a spire 1,776 feet high. The skyscrapers regarded as the world's highest are the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at 1,483 feet.
Libeskind said he wanted to call it the "Gardens of the World" because "gardens are a constant affirmation of life."
What replaces the World Trade Center is an emotional public debate in New York with a diverse array of government, business, residential, commuter, environmental and victims' relatives interest groups vying for influence.
Many relatives consider the site a graveyard or cemetery because the remains of as many as 800 killed in the inferno and collapse of the buildings may never be positively identified.
"We will rebuild the towers," Jonathan Hakala of "Team Twin Towers" advocacy group said on the sidelines of Thursday's event. "As time passes, people are more accepting of the idea. People are looking to us to see if we have the spirit required and the resilience required to come back from this."
Other relatives' groups have called for the entire site or most of it to become a memorial garden to the victims.
He said that in order to get a project like that started you have to have commitments from companies TODAY to lease space at some time in the future just to get the financing lined up.
Trump indicated that the towers already had a lot of problems leasing space, which is why a lot of city/state/fed offices were in them. He said that today you will have a much harder time trying to sell a company on leasing the upper floors – that nobody wants space on the 91st floor, etc..
He predicted four smaller 50-ish storey buildings.
I know Trump probably isn’t the person that’s going to end up making the call but he certainly knows more about real estate and buildings and the way the system works concerning things like that than I do. And it sounded pretty reasonable/realistic when he was explaining it.
FWIW.
This might be true for the average skyscraper, but it won't be the case for the WTC. If they do run into trouble getting tenants, all it will take is one news story, and small- to medium-sized companies all over the tri-state area, and across the country, will stampede to sign up. Patriotism in action.
BTW, the reason the tallest skyscraper in New York (the Empire State Building) has trouble getting tenants is because it's falling apart inside. Not structurally I mean, just that the halls and offices are in various states of disrepair because the owner hasn't spent any money on upkeep for years. (Until only a few years ago, that owner was one Leona Helmsley, which pretty much tells you all you need to know.)
I saw about 5 out of the 7. the other 2 were taking altogether too long to load.
All were long on landscaping, short on architecture. Libeskid (sp?) had an interesting aesthetic, reflecting the Statue of Liberty.
They have a huge chunk of real estate to work with. All of them seemed more interested in the open space than the office space. Does NYC want office space? Maybe not. Let everyone telecommute. Build a park above with the underground transportation hub below. Manhattan could use another park.
I VOTE FOR SIR NORMAN FOSTER (of course, I am biased...he is a client of our company, SSAF.
I’d personally like to see them build a single 300 story building.
I have no doubts that a lot of companies would want to sign up, I just wonder whether it would pan out.
According to Trump, after the first bombing there were many companies that didn’t want to renew their lease and quite a few that wanted to break their lease. He made it sound like the companies themselves weren’t the problem, necessarily – they had a lease – but the employees didn’t want to be there. He also indicated that there was a cascading series of lawsuits that was unreal. He made it sound like people were going on disability due to stress/injury, suing their companies/landlord/city/whoever for not preventing the attack, etc.
That’s where the company starts to get pinched. On the one hand they want to be patriotic, but on the other they have to get to work and produce and not have to deal with employee complaints and legal problems forever. And you really can’t blame the employee if they truly feel in danger, I suppose.
But I hope you’re right. I like to see documentaries and read articles about big construction projects.
1776, eh? I like it, especially if it was unintentional...
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