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Famous Works by the Six New Design Teams Picked For Ground Zero


Six design teams, made up of architects, artists and designers from around the world, were chosen last week by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to create new plans for the World Trade Center site. Many of those selected are known for creating celebrated buildings, such as the glass domed Reichstag in Berlin and the stark white High Museum building in Atlanta. Others have already created designs for the World Trade Center site, in response to requests from the Max Protech Gallery in Soho and the New York Times Magazine.

The first six plans for the site, designed by New York firm Beyer Blinder Belle, were largely panned by the public, and the new teams are part of the development corporation's attempt to begin again.

Each team will create several different plans for Ground Zero, to be narrowed down to three final plans by the end of the year. While the first round of six plans appeared very similar because each included the 11 million square feet of office space required by developer Larry Silverstein, the new teams will instead create designs based on more flexible requirements. The Port Authority has yet to approve the range of office space for the new designs, but Lower Manhattan Development Corporation official Roland Betts said that the amount will stretch from "substantially reduced" at the bottom end up to the full 11 million square feet.

The six teams:

Read about each design team, to learn about their ideas for lower Manhattan, and to see photos of their past work.

Daniel Libeskind

Berlin architect Daniel Libeskind designed his city's Jewish Museum, which opened in 2001. The center of the museum is an empty space, suggesting Berlin's missing Jewish citizens, Libeskind explains on his website. Visitors use sixty bridges to cross from exhibit to exhibit.

In his application to design lower Manhattan, Libeskind wrote that the "act of building is an entirely optimistic one," something that New York deserves, "despite and because of the tragedy of September 11."

Foster and Partners

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, London firm Foster and Partners created an updated parliament building for a unified Germany. Spiral walkways line a new dome on top of the renovated Reichstag, and the public can observe their political representatives from above.

For lower Manhattan, Foster and Partners said they will work to create a design to become "a symbol once again for the city itself and the optimism and cohesiveness of the inhabitants of New York City and the American people."

Meier, Eisenman, Gwathmey and Holl

The development corporation also chose a team of four New York architects:

Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey and Steven Holl. The four all worked together on the

New York Times Magazine's project to design the World Trade Center site. Meier is known for designing the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta

Meier, Eisenman, Gwathmey and Holl (2)

Charles Gwathmey designed the project to restore and add on to New York City's Guggenheim Museum, while Peter Eisenman is known for his convention center in Columbus, Ohio.

Holl's Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland (pictured here) was built around a focal point called a "kiasma," said to be the starting place for a journey to the unknown.

In their submission to create a design for lower Manhattan, the team responded to the physical and political struggles involved, saying that they view design as a process that transforms "problem-solving into art."

UNITED ARCHITECTS

"Ground Zero is the last place any of us want to think about as a 'project,' the last place any of us want to see 'developed' in that cynical shortsighted manner that the word has come to mean. And now it has to be the first question," the team of young international designers and architects UNITED ARCHITECTS wrote in their proposal to design the World Trade Center site.

The team is made up of Reiser Umemoto and Kevin Kenon, both based in New York, London-based firm Foreign Office Architects, UN Studio from Amsterdam, Greg Lynn FORM from Los Angeles and Imaginary Forces, based both in New York and Los Angeles.

Foreign Office Architects, designers of the Yokohama International Port Terminal in Japan, created a plan for the World Trade Center site soon after the disaster (pictured). The plan, which depicts clusters of round, interconnected towers rising into the sky, was shown in January at the Max Protech Gallery in Soho.

Skidmore Owings and Merrill

New York firm Skidmore Owings and Merrillredesigned 7 World Trade Center for developer Larry Silverstein. In order to work for the development corporation, the firm agreed to turn down any future work for Silverstein. The firm has designed many New York City buildings, including the Time Warner/AOL building in construction near Columbus Circle (pictured).

In its application to design the World Trade Center site, Skidmore created a team they called "both global and local," joining with architects, artists and designers, including Inigo Maglano-Ovalle, Rita McBride, Jessica Stockholder, Elyn Zimmerman, Field Operations, Tom Leader, Michael Maltzan, Neutelings Riedijk and the Tokyo firm SANAA.

THINK

A team of nine architects and engineers from the U.S., Japan and Germany submitted an application under the name "THINK."

"The central problem of this project is not simply how best to remember those that perished in this tragedy but how to make their memory the inspiration for a better future," wrote the team in their application to the development corporation. New York architect Frederic Schwartz, called "citizen architect" by the New York Times, leads the team. Schwartz was one of the first to suggest burying West Street as part of rebuilding lower Manhattan, and has done a great deal of work downtown. The Schwartz-designed Staten Island Ferry Terminal is still in construction

THINK (2)

Other members of the THINK team are Shigeru Ban, from Tokyo, Japan, New York based architects Ken Smith, Rafael Vinoly and David Rockwell, William Moorish from Virginia, Jane Marie Smith from Maryland and engineering firms Buro Happold Engineersand Jorg Schlaich.

Along with Schwartz, Vinoly participated in the New York Times Magazine's project to design lower Manhattan. He designed the Tokyo International Forum in Japan.

The Winning Plan


The design by architect Daniel Libeskind featuring a 1,776-foot spire and an open pit where the twin towers once stood was chosen Wednesday night as the final plan for the World Trade Center site. The plan also features a museum at the site and structures that will create memorial spaces free of shadows each September 11. The single spire will be the tallest structure in the world.

Rebuilding officials selected the Libeskind design over the twin latticework towers by the THINK architect team. The choice was made by a committee with representatives of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the governor and the mayor. Both Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg favored the Libeskind design. Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Chairman John Whitehead reportedly telephoned Libeskind with the news, telling the architect that his "vision has brought hope and inspiration to a city still recovering from a terrible tragedy."

The plan still faces challenges from government officials, developers, and victims families and will likely be modified.

Libeskind said his plan was the "bargain basement" in cost and estimated his design could be built for $330 million. However, it is still unclear how the memorial will be paid for, when the buildings will be built, and whether the final towers will look like those in the design. Developer Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease on the World Trade Center site, has said he does not like the plan.

Libeskind has spent the last month making changes to his design based on recommendations from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and other officials. His original design called for a memorial at the trade center foundation 70 feet below ground. That has been changed to 30 feet, allowing for infrastructure and transportation underneath.

The final plan was selected from nine proposals for redeveloping the trade center site, where nearly 2,800 people died September 11, 2001. The design competition was launched after an initial set of plans, released in July, was rejected by the public and officials.

Pause, Reflect, Respect


On the same day that the mayor and the governor announced the creation of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation, the chief of the Uniformed Firefighters Association was arrested while en route to the funeral of a firefighter killed on September 11. The crime? He participated in a demonstration of hundreds of firefighters protesting the move to reduce their involvement in the remaining recovery operation. The anger and emotion of the firefighters has touched raw nerves from firehouses to neighborhoods throughout the city and suburbs and should give pause to premature plans to rebuild.

Is the city truly ready to rev up the engines for redevelopment just yet? Are any of us prepared to let the bulldozers have their way with missing limbs, shards of bone, and personal effects? Less than three months after a murderous attack of unprecedented ferocity that forever changed the way we live, should the solemnity of this operation cease?

The literature of these recent weeks suggests not. The poignant "Portraits of Grief" in the New York Times themselves comprise an unfinished documentary: memories of lives snuffed out in their prime; of shock and numbness yet to mature into grief; of incredulity at the permanence of the loss. The families speak of the dead in the present tense: their passions for music, for e-mail joking, cooking, coaching and loving.

History provides further cause for reflection. Just a few years ago, a lawsuit temporarily halted the construction of a new federal building in lower Manhattan when excavation uncovered an African-American burial ground. For months the public debated how to best respect the century old gravesite and give it its due place in history, until ultimately a memorial was erected.

In 1995, after the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, the community and the victims' families agreed to the now-famous rows of empty chairs, yet the process through which consensus emerged evolved over time, from an initial we'll-show'em urge to rebuild bigger and better.

Over a half century ago, the Polish government decided that the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau would be left intact as a reminder to the world of the consequences of unchecked human evil. There would be no demolition, no removal of debris, no rebuilding. Since then, millions have traveled to see these ruins. My husband and two of our children made this pilgrimage two years ago. We walked through more than 500 acres of ruins, at every turn acknowledging that no book or movie had ever captured the sickening reality of the barracks, crematoria and endless pools of human ashes. How grateful we were for this preservation, for the refusal to demolish and rebuild, for the recognition that this monstrous cemetery of the damned was hallowed ground.

The value of 16 acres of prime Manhattan real estate sixty years later may not compare to the countryside outside of Krakow. Yet how a civilized people should treat the soil upon which such a deliberate and grievous taking of life occurred remains a serious consideration. Fifty years from now, how will we want the world to remember what happened to New York City on September 11, 2001?

Most importantly, whatever is built should be the result of an open and inclusive decision-making process. The terrorists' attack on the Trade Center was hardly directed at its bricks and mortar; those planes were intended to tear apart our way of life: our pluralism, our diversity and our democracy.

To start, the redevelopment corporation would be wise to pay attention to an emerging coalition of more than a dozen civic and community groups who are presently articulating critical questions, the answers to which will set a pattern for development in this city for generations:

What overarching vision will govern the development process? How will it respect the health and diversity of neighborhoods and assure environmentally- conscious construction? What can be done expeditiously to salvage and restore existing buildings, homes and businesses and to immediately protect local residents from toxic air pollutants? With an economy in recession and unemployment at new highs, how will the rebuilding best serve to create jobs beyond the relatively short-term construction work? What economic forecasting will determine future growth sectors: for what businesses are we to build anew in lower Manhattan? What about finding space for sorely needed affordable housing? What transportation, telecommunications and waste management infrastructure will be required to support the new community?

The redevelopment corporation must operate cautiously, inclusively and sensitively, lest this city's already wounded human tapestry be further frayed. The phoenix that rises up from our ashes should be symbols of our democracy, both in beauty and relevance, and in the thoughtful consensus planning that guides its development. This hallowed ground demands no less.

Nancy Biberman is president of the Women's Housing & Economic Development Corporation, which has won awards for the historic restoration of the abandoned Morrisania Hospital in the Bronx.



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