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VISIONS FOR GROUND ZERO: OVERVIEW

VISIONS FOR GROUND ZERO: OVERVIEW; 7 Design Teams Offer New Ideas For Attack Site

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December 19, 2002, Section A, Page 1Buy Reprints
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Seven teams of architects from around the world unveiled new designs for the World Trade Center site yesterday, giving a remarkable civic tutorial on architecture and contemporary urban design aimed at mending the hole left in Lower Manhattan by the Sept. 11 attack.

The designs, the subject of secrecy and speculation since the teams began work 12 weeks ago, include a broad array of elements: quiet memorial gardens and scenic plazas in the sky, soaring towers of bare scaffolding and sprawling canopies of glass. Four include what would be the tallest building in the world, and all set aside an area for a memorial to the victims of 9/11.

''The architects have responded with great depth to the question, 'What does Sept. 11 represent?' '' said John C. Whitehead, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the joint city-state agency that is overseeing the rebuilding project. ''Their responses vary, just as our own reactions to the trauma, the aftermath and recovery were so very personal and so very different.''

The main point of the exercise, as for a similar one in July that resulted in six scrapped designs, was not to design buildings but to create a land-use plan for the site, setting the location of office buildings, a train station, a memorial and new streets. That land-use plan is to be released by Jan. 31.

Left unspoken during the three-hour presentation in the gleaming glass atrium of the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center was that none of these designs might ever appear on the skyline. For all the high-minded talk of the allegory and repose in the designs, commercial considerations will be large and perhaps the leading factors in determining what is built and when.

Some of the designs, like a crystalline tower by Foster & Partners, the British firm led by Norman Foster, are directly reminiscent of the Twin Towers, a single tower whose two halves, according to the architect, ''split and kiss at three points.''

Others center their most striking elements on the footprints of the destroyed towers, as in the plan by Daniel Libeskind, the German architect whose design takes visitors on a deliberate procession 70 feet down into ground zero, to the bedrock of the excavated site.

A design by a team led by architects Frederic Schwartz and Rafael Viñoly encloses 13 acres of the 16-acre site under an enormous glass ceiling, with two glass cylinders protecting the footprints of the towers. Another, by a group called United Architects, creates a similarly large public space 800 feet in the air, where a skyway connects five towers with gardens, shopping, cafes and a conference center. Another team's towers, connected with three horizontal floors, inevitably drew comparisons to a giant tick-tack-toe board.

Each design presented yesterday included office buildings, a train station, a memorial and more, and while it is the more that sets the designs apart, that is also the most provisional part of the effort.

None of that dampened the enthusiasm of many people who saw the designs yesterday. At the conclusion of the first presentation, by Mr. Libeskind, a round of applause from the assembled audience of government officials, family members of Sept. 11 victims and residents of Lower Manhattan rose to a roar.

''I think it signaled a sort of release,'' said C. Virginia Fields, the Manhattan borough president, who was in the audience, ''as people realized that these plans were not at all like the other six we saw last summer.''

Those other plans, released in July, were derided as unimaginative and ugly even before they were released to the public, as government officials and members of civic groups interested in the rebuilding process were given a preview of the plans and gave vent to their disappointment. At a public hearing of 4,500 people that month, the resoundingly negative response to the plans led rebuilding officials to declare that they would essentially start over the planning for the site.

The plans that have resulted from this new round ''were forged in a democratic process,'' said Louis R. Tomson, the president of the development corporation.

As rebuilding officials and some of the architects themselves said, the designs also spoke of a spirit of pride and patriotism that swept the country after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, one that brought hundreds of professional designers and amateur architects from around the country to submit ideas, thoughts and plans.

Now, officials from Lower Manhattan Development; the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site; and other city, state and federal representatives will work to decide on a master plan for the site by the end of next month.

As part of that effort, the plans will be on display at the Winter Garden from tomorrow through Feb. 3. Comments can be submitted to rebuilding officials at the exhibition or through the corporation's Internet site, www.RenewNYC.org. The plans can also be viewed on that site and at www.LowerManhattan.info.

The development corporation has scheduled a public hearing for Jan. 13 in Lower Manhattan to hear further public comments on the plans, but some observers of the rebuilding effort are already calling for an expanded discussion.

''The terrific variety and breadth of this work calls out for the kind of public process that gives people an opportunity to have their voices heard,'' said Kent Barwick, president of the Municipal Art Society.

In describing their designs, the architects were by turns poetic and bombastic.

Mr. Libeskind spoke of the beauty of the huge concrete slurry walls that hold back the Hudson River and that are an integral part of his idea for the memorial site, 70 feet below ground in the excavated pit. ''You can just hear the gravel underfoot as you peruse the brilliance of those magical foundations that have spoken with their own voice,'' he said.

Lord Foster emphasized the environmentally friendly elements of his tower, with a multilayered facade that can be partly opened to allow natural ventilation. A team that included the New York architects Richard Meier and Peter Eisenman divided its memorial among seven spaces, including a memorial plaza that would float on the Hudson River.

The plan by Peterson Littenberg Architects included elements of the plan the firm contributed to the first round of designs that were well received, including the promenade down West Street from the trade center site to Battery Park, adding two twin towers, each 1,400 feet tall, standing next to each other on the eastern edge of the site.

Several teams designed what were referred to as ''cities in the sky,'' buildings that included public and cultural space at their middle and upper levels, in essence adding to the available area for those uses. A team led by Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the firm that designed the new 7 World Trade Center building, included public gardens at the level of the 52nd floor in its design.

A team known as United Architects, which included several firms dominated by a younger generation of architects than those on the teams led by renowned leaders in the field, built what its representative called ''a very visionary, utopian proposal for a city in the sky.''

And among the three proposals generated by the Think team is one with a park 10 stories above street level that cantilevers over West Street.

''I don't think there's any question that these designs addressed the problems that the last ones missed,'' said Nikki Stern, whose husband, James E. Potorti, was killed on Sept. 11. ''This round involved a lot more design and creativity,'' she said.

She noted, however, that neither the architects themselves nor the materials passed out by the development corporation made clear exactly how the designs addressed the requirements; how much office space was incorporated in their towers, or how many square feet of retail stores and hotel rooms would be on or near the site.

David Kallick, a coordinator of the Labor Community Advocacy Network to Rebuild New York, said he felt that several designs were little different from those rejected last summer. ''Some of them really turned their back on Chinatown or cut off the site from the east rather than integrating it with the rest of downtown,'' he said.

Roland W. Betts, a director of the development corporation who oversees the task force on the development of the site, said that he believes there will be a good deal of debate over the virtues and faults of the new plans.

''It's the nature of our democracy that this process is open and inclusive, sometimes discordant, sometimes cacophonic, on a subject so inherently painful and where such great losses were experienced by so many,'' he said.

A correction was made on 
Dec. 20, 2002

A front-page article yesterday about the new round of architectural proposals for the World Trade Center site misstated the nationality of one architect, Daniel Libeskind. Although based in Berlin, he is a native of Poland and a United States citizen. He is not German.

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