The most futuristic aspects of the schemes are in the skyline–several call for the tallest buildings in the world. British architect Norman Foster says his firm’s two towers “kiss and touch and become one”; team United offers a cluster of towers that lean into each other; the team of Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey and Steven Holl proposes five crisp high-rises, joined by horizontal connectors. All these links were inspired by the need to give multiple exit options. Still, the most electrifying scheme is Daniel Libeskind’s poetic spiral of high-rises that ends with a jagged shaft 1,776 feet up in the sky.
But more critical–and more likely to become reality than any of these specific towers–is how the various schemes treat the street level and underground. Most, by putting rentable office space up high, were generous with parks, promenades and cultural facilities. The teams were told to create sites for a memorial–and several couldn’t resist designing one. Libeskind was struck by the “great slurry walls” 70 feet down that survived the attack, a dike against landfill and an engineering miracle of its time–and he leaves them as a memorial, adding a waterfall and a museum. Foster suggests two memorials in the voids of the Twin Towers’ footprints, one for families of victims, the other for the public.
Most proposals call for millions of feet of office and retail space, but the team called Think suggests the site be given over to the public, with commercial development along the perimeter only as the market demands. The centerpiece: a pair of lacy open steel structures–imagine 21st-century Eiffel Towers–into which designers could build cultural and other amenities. “If something good is going to come out of this disaster,” says team leader Rafael Vinoly, “it is the affirmation of the public will.”
Hang on to that idea–and to the hope that one of the more innovative schemes will actually become the basis for planning. Though critics fear a design by committee, with bits and pieces from various schemes, Roland Betts, who heads the LMDC’s site committee, insists one of these new proposals will win out. With the Port Authority, which actually owns the land, the LMDC will produce a master plan in the next month or so. (A footnote: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is still negotiating with the PA–though the odds are long–that the site would be under city control, giving planners more flexibility.) Meanwhile, citizens of New York and the world are being treated to dramatic visions of 21st-century city-building. Check out the LMDC Web site (renewnyc.com) and see for yourself.
