Friday, October 3
Three world-famous architects -- Norman Foster, Fumihiko Maki and
Jean Nouvel -- will also work to design the World Trade Center site,
developer Larry Silverstein announced on September 30. The architects
will design Ground Zero office towers, joining Daniel Libeskind,
architect of the World Trade Center site master plan, David Childs, who
is working with Libeskind on a 1,776-foot-tall tower for the site, and
Santiago Calatrava, who is designing a Ground Zero transit station. Some
wonder whether the addition of more architects will change Libeskind's
authority over the site. "Mr. Libeskind appears to be more and more the
odd man out in the redevelopment of Ground Zero," wrote the New York
Observer.
Foster, the British architect who designed the rehabilitation of the
Reichstag in Berlin, was a finalist in the competition for a Ground Zero
master plan. Foster's Ground Zero competition design called for tall
towers that meet and "touch and kiss" at several places, but he told the
Times he will "start from scratch" on a new design. French architect
Nouvel has designed Paris' Arab World Institute, office towers in Tokyo
and Cologne, and apartment buildings in SoHo. Maki is a Japanese
architect known for the Asahi Broadcast Headquarters in Tokyo.
In other downtown design news, the 115-year-old Corbin Building
at 11 John Street will be preserved and may become part of the new
Fulton Street Transit Center. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority
announced its plans to preserve the building on October 2. Previous
plans had suggested that the building be torn down to make way for the
new transit station, which will connect and organize the platforms for
the A, C, J, M, Z, 2, 3, 4 and 5 lines, but preservationists
successfully lobbied to save the building.
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