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Two finalists selected in bid to build on World Trade Center site
By Alexis Dyer
National/World News Co-Editor
FILE PHOTO
Libeskind's design would leave the footprints of the World Trade Center towers intact, as well as the original slurry walls.
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Two designs have been selected as finalists in the competition to create a new structure for the site where the World Trade Center towers stood.
The selected teams are Studio Daniel Libeskind, headed by Berlin-based architect Daniel Libeskind, and Think, which consists of Frederic Schwartz, Rafael Vinoly, Ken Smith and Shigeru Ban.
The Think eam’s design includes two lattice-like towers that are reminiscent of the original World Trade Center buildings.
The Libeskind team’s design would make a chasm of Ground Zero with peaked towers at the edges.
The design would also leave the footprints of the World Trade Center towers and the original slurry walls of the buildings intact.
Libeskind said, according to The New York Times, that the walls “withstood the unimaginable trauma of the destruction and stand as eloquent as the Constitution itself, asserting the durability of democracy and the valuve of individual life.”
Both of the designs include towers that would be the tallest in the world, but neither plan includes office space in the upper part of the buildings. Instead, the Think plan calls for a memorial observation deck at the top and the Libeskind plan, a hanging garden.
Both teams will work with rebuilding officials to refine their designs.
Possible changes would include raising the level of the memorial space in the Libeskind design and adjusting the height of the Think team’s towers.
“No plan in its current configuration is perfect,” said Roland Betts, development corporation director in charge of the task force that selected the two plans, according to The New York Times. “Rest assured that whatever the modifications, the core idea of each plan will be preserved. The goal of the next few weeks is not to compromise the plans, but to make them better.”
One potential obstacle to both plans, however, is the fact that Larry Silverstein, the lead representative of the firms that hold the lease on the site, signed a century-long lease shortly before September 11.
Silverstein contends that he has a legal right to pick the new design for the space.
He favors a shorter series of towers that he believes will be more attractive to businesses post-September 11.
Betts said in response, according to The New York Times, that Silverstein would have a role in the construction of the new buildings, but not a large one.
Of Silverstein's comments, Frederic Schwartz of the Think team says, according to The New York Times, "People think cities are made of glass and steel and concrete. Cities are made out of citizens. It's the spiritual lives of citizens."
Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the Regional Plan Association also said, according to The New York Times, "Public agencies owe something to the public." Including, he says, "a process that they can follow along with."
Another complication involves the city’s Port Authority, which currently owns the trade center property.
Port Authority officials have been in conflict with the rebuilding committee over priorities in construction.
They are focused mostly on matters of infrastructure, including the transportation complex and the location of truck ramps at the basement levels of the site.
The rebuilding committee, conversely, is interested mostly in aesthetics, including the impact of the new design on the Manhattan sky line.
Indeed, the two designs were selected from the others based on their focus on the memorial rather than on office space and square footage.
Officials of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation have maintained that the rebuilding committee will continue to oversee development, thanks mostly to overwhelming public support.
Officials estimate that either porject would take approximately 12 years to complete.
However, they also noted that the framework for the towers would be up in four.
Libeskind and his team have estimated that the cost of his plan, including the public spaces and reinforcement of the original slurry walls would be about $280 million to $330 million.
Vinoly of the Think team estimated that the public spaces and the framework of the towers would cost $750 million to $800 million.
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