Free Republic

An atheist group that is known for targeting supposed violations of the separation between church and state recently protested a Holocaust memorial because the monument plans to feature a Star of David.The Freedom From Religion Foundation, or FFRF, has stated its opposition to the proposed Ohio Statehouse Holocaust memorial because its leaders believe that including the religious symbol would create "legal precedent."The co-presidents of the FFRF, Don Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, wrote a letter to Richard Finan, chair of the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board about the proposed memorial, The Blaze reported.“Permitting one permanent sectarian and exclusionary religious...

Examining a tower model are the architect David Childs, Governor George Pataki, the developer Larry A. Silverstein, the architect David (sic) Libeskind and Speaker Sheldon Silver. "It has some really ingenious safety features. For example, the state offices will be in the silvery fortified base."

Sometimes... the most important quality an architect can possess is optimism. For example, it took 12 years for the Jewish Museum I designed in Berlin to finally open to the public. A few hours later it had to close. The date: Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. That jarring confluence of events not only predated but also presaged my role in rebuilding ground zero. And the memories of what we went through in Berlin give me confidence that we will succeed in New York as well. When I won the museum competition, Berliners were divided between those who felt my design would...

Osama... did not attack only the World Trade Center on 9/11. And refusing to build new Twin Towers and reclaim our skyline from terrorists does not make New Yorkers safe. It makes us cowards. Which is why the plan Donald Trump unveiled... is so refreshing. Bin Laden and al Qaeda attacked the United States of America — and what it stands for around the world: Global trade and economic power in New York, military might at the Pentagon and democracy in Washington. But a free civilization does not give up its ideals to the enemy so easily — nor does...

Donald Trump has built much of modern New York. But on the most important building project ever — the quest to repair New York's smashed heart and broken skyline — Trump's hands are tied. Nevertheless, Trump is New York's only hope. Gov. Pataki and his minions have refused to listen to New Yorkers and Americans, and do the right thing at Ground Zero. Gotham's last best chance to repair Downtown's legacy is if Pataki will listen to Trump. Trump said it straight in last week's Post: "I think the World Trade Center should be rebuilt on the site, only stronger...

With the Freedom Tower stalled and possibly dead, New Yorkers who never liked it are speaking out. This includes some whom the Freedom Tower was most cynically calculated to pander to — the families of those murdered on 9/11, and the heroes of that day. Many of them want new, safer Twin Towers to pierce Manhattan's skyline once again. Daniel Libeskind sold his Ground Zero commission not with brilliant architecture, but through psychobabble about New York's recovery from 9/11. He named his proposal "Memory Foundations," and stuck a trumped-up memorial at the center of his Ground Zero plan. Libeskind wanted...

<p>An artist's rendering of a night view of the proposed Freedom Tower, center, as seen from the south. At left are the Empire State Building, and Statue of Liberty.</p> <p>NEW YORK (CNN) --The Freedom Tower, proposed to restore Lower Manhattan's skyline, will be the world's tallest building, according to the architects, who unveiled the revised model Friday.</p>

Story URL Link with photos: http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/nyc-freedom1219,0,7693237.story?coll=nyc-topheadlines-span Architects Release Revised WTC Tower Design By The Associated Press December 19, 2003, 9:55 AM EST A new design for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site gracefully slopes into a spire rising 1,776 feet, echoing the Statue of Liberty and invoking elements of the Brooklyn Bridge, according to renderings released Friday. The new plan -- which comes after months of contentious negotiations between designers Daniel Libeskind and David Childs -- retains many elements of Libeskind's original plan but appears to smooth out many of its most angular elements. At a news...

NEW YORK - After months of feuding over the size and shape of the tower that will rise at the World Trade Center site, two world-renowned architects have reached a compromise design for what could be the world's tallest building. Negotiations have been contentious between Daniel Libeskind and David Childs, but the two were able to meet a deadline set by Gov. George E. Pataki and the results were expected to be unveiled Friday. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which oversees the rebuilding, says the tower will rise 1,776 feet, culminating in a spire and evoking the Statue of Liberty....

If five-foot, four-inch architect Daniel Libeskind's math can be believed, he could don a yard-high top hat and become Earth's tallest man. Unfortunately for those who care about the World Trade Center, Libeskind's entire plan for Lower Manhattan is similarly wrapped in illogic and doubletalk. Unless updated blueprints by Libeskind and his design colleague, David Childs, reveal something completely different on December 15, Ground Zero's redevelopment will remain a high-rise ruse. Details of this trickery abound in "The Berzon Report," an online expose that alleges numerous inconsistencies related to the WTC rebuilding process. I have written about and befriended Berzon,...

<p>December 12, 2003 -- Developer Larry Silverstein's Freedom Tower design team was so upset over an alleged raid on their offices by staffers of Ground Zero planner Daniel Libeskind that they brought in former Police Commissioner Howard Safir to investigate, sources said yesterday.</p>

<p>December 11, 2003 -- The fight over the Ground Zero Freedom Tower has spiraled completely out of control, with accusations of a "Watergate break-in" and bitter feuding between the two key architects, sources said yesterday.</p> <p>The collaboration between World Trade Center master planner Daniel Libeskind and David Childs, the architect for developer Larry Silverstein, is on the verge of breaking down and the pair are not even speaking.</p>

December 10, 2003 More Revisions in Plans for New York's Tallest TowerBy DAVID W. DUNLAP he nearly completed design for the signature tower at the World Trade Center site would recapture the title of world's tallest building for New York City without forcing anyone to work higher than 70 stories in the sky.  The basic design concept of the torqued tower with an open latticework top was offered in September 2002 by Guy Nordenson, the engineer working with David M. Childs on the design of the new Freedom Tower at the trade center site. Mr. Nordenson was part of a...

The new design for the signature Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site, which is set to be unveiled next week, looks nothing like the original, sources say. It was originally designed in architect Daniel Libeskind’s master plan as an angular, asymmetrical tower. But the new, more detailed plans by David Childs, an architect hired by the World Trade Center lease-holder, calls for a tapered skyscraper with only 70 occupied stories, though it will still be the tallest structure in the world. The top of the redesigned tower will feature a lattice of cables and antennas topping off at...

<p>October 23, 2003 -- Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind stormed out of a meeting about the design of the site's Freedom Tower, threatening to break up his collaboration with the project's lead architect, David Childs, sources told The Post. After the Monday afternoon face-off, Libeskind also ordered several staffers working at Childs' Skidmore Owings & Merrill offices to pack up their equipment and leave - but at least two of them returned to work the next day.</p>

<p>October 10, 2003 -- Ground Zero's signature Freedom Tower will soar above 2,000 feet - well beyond the previously announced height of 1,776 feet - under a revised design being worked on by architect Daniel Libeskind, a rebuilding official said yesterday. Broadcasters who want to put an antenna on top of the tower have been pushing for a higher structure.</p>

<p>September 17, 2003 -- TODAY, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the Port Authority will unveil Daniel Libeskind's revised master plan for Ground Zero. We'll get to see how well the architect, public agencies and leaseholder have reconciled the needs for commercial renewal, memorial commemoration, footprint preservation, street extension and skyline restoration - all on a site too small for them all. The design will little resemble Libeskind's original, knife-edged, pit-and-pendulum vision of last year. It retains all the 10 million square feet of offices that Libeskind grudgingly squeezed into a version shown last winter.</p>

<p>September 17, 2003 -- The World Trade Center plan to be unveiled today will have no construction in the "footprints" of the Twin Towers - handing family members a victory in an emotionally wrenching dispute. The design change is intended to placate angry - and increasingly vocal - terror-victim relatives, who were alarmed at the possibility of a bus garage or other infrastructure being built on what they consider sacred ground.</p>

The site plan represents the destruction of Sept. 11. Now the architecture will provide the creative response. That's the implicit message in the selection of Santiago Calatrava to design a permanent replacement for the PATH station that was destroyed by the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. At last, the controversial plan developed by Daniel Libeskind for the site begins to make sense. From it, great things might grow. Mr. Calatrava, 52, is the world's greatest living poet of transportation architecture. A native of Spain, Mr. Calatrava trained as both an engineer and an architect. He is best...

A cluster of sloping, angular buildings with a 1,776-foot spire that would be the tallest in the world was chosen Wednesday as the blueprint to redevelop the World Trade Center site, The Associated Press has learned. Architect Daniel Libeskind's design beat a plan by an international design team known as THINK, which envisioned two 1,665-foot latticework towers straddling the footprints of the original towers, said a source familiar with the selection. An official announcement is expected Thursday.