Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 15:22:25 -0500 (EST) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC Rebuilding #141:A Push Taller is On! The following New York Times article has spurred Associated Press reports,repeated at MSNBC and other sites that use AP input, and perhaps most importantly has a poll at http://money.cnn.com/2002/11/22/news/companies/wtc_develop/ that asks,"Should the world's tallest building be built at the WTC site?" and so far has YES leading 3-1 with over 3800 votes counted. I urge you all to go there and vote and be counted! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Designers Draw Praise for Trade Center Ideas November 22, 2002 By EDWARD WYATT Memorials on the tops of buildings and below ground, a formal 19th-century-style garden and the tallest building in the world are among the elements included in several new sets of plans being drawn up for the World Trade Center site, according to rebuilding officials who have seen them. Seven architecture teams, brought into the process in September after the first set of six plans was widely derided as unimaginative, have created work that is "astoundingly innovative, creative and exciting," Roland W. Betts, a Lower Manhattan Development Corporation director, said yesterday, adding that he was not worried about raising expectations too high. How those plans will be incorporated into what is finally built at the trade center site is still uncertain. Yesterday, a senior official of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site, said that the Port Authority's own planning process would have to incorporate the design elements that emerge from the seven architecture teams, which were hired by the development corporation. The two agencies have sought in public to portray themselves as amiable teammates, but they have also sparred over the lead role in the rebuilding process on several occasions over the last year. And in the past two weeks, officials of each agency have expressed uncertainty about exactly what the other is planning and how their separate efforts will be merged. The first plans that the public is likely to see are those by the seven teams hired by the development corporation, which are being refined and will be presented in their final form next month. Each plan is centered on a memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the trade center, said officials who have seen the plans, but the design teams have applied vastly different methods to evoke the losses. Some designers have incorporated buildings and structures on the site as part of the memorial. Others have set aside sacred space in the sky or at ground level. One plan, for example, sets aside the top of a soaring tower as a memorial, with much of the lower part of the building housing a memorial cultural center. Another contains a formal, 19th-century-style garden as part of the approach to the memorial, to set it off from the commercial space nearby, two rebuilding officials said. And at least one plan incorporates the concept of "negative space," evoking the towers by extending their footprints as much as 85 feet below ground level, exposing the subterranean levels of the trade center site, where traces of so many victims were recovered. Rebuilding officials declined yesterday to comment on specifics of the design concepts for the site, which were presented by the architecture teams earlier this week to the development corporation's site planning committee, and to officials from the Port Authority and the Bloomberg and Pataki administrations. Mr. Betts, who heads the development corporation's site planning committee, said in an interview yesterday that the plans were almost too fantastic to be described. "They are astoundingly innovative, creative and exciting," Mr. Betts said. "I don't want to use words to try to describe what you really need to see to understand. They're really good, and they did things that are so different from one another that it's astounding." The design teams, which include some of the best known architects from around the world, will now work on the final presentations of their plans, which will be shown to the development corporation's full board early next month. An exhibition of the work to the public will begin in mid-December in the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center, officials said. The architecture teams have each developed methods of phasing in the development of the commercial space at the site over the next 10 years or more, Mr. Betts said. He said that "almost all" of the teams created designs that lean toward the high end of the range they were given for allowable commercial space - 6.5 million to 10 million square feet. The first set of plans, which drew complaints about being too crowded with office buildings, placed 11 million square feet of office space on the site. Mr. Betts said, however, that the new plans "incorporated that space in a way that the site doesn't feel crowded at all." Design plans emerging from the development corporation, however, might be in conflict with similar work apparently under way at the Port Authority, and it is not clear which agency will make the ultimate decisions. After a meeting yesterday of the Port Authority's Board of Commissioners, Joseph J. Seymour, the executive director of the Port Authority, told reporters that the best elements of the designs of the seven architecture teams would be combined with work being performed by its own planning consultant, the architecture firm of Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn. That firm is preparing plans for what will go beneath the trade center site - where, for example, a bus terminal might be placed to accommodate the crowds expected to visit the memorial, and how the concourse will be routed from the transportation hub to various exits around the site. But the consultant is also working on surface elements, like what parts of the street grid will be restored and where the transportation terminal will be located, plans that could conflict with the concepts emerging from the development corporation's teams. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company ---------- End forwarded message ---------- Now,the article does not dwell particularly on the plan for a World's-Tallest...but whatever we send to letters@nytimes.com (postal address and telephone number required,150 word limit) should specifically praise this possibility. We don't know,at this stage,if the particular tall plan is from Lord Foster,as has been hinted,or one of the other teams. Of course ONE very tall building is not what many of us would prefer,but if that's all that can be obtained at this stage it obviously has to be the world's tallest...you can not replace two buildings in the 1362-1368 foot range with one and call it full rebuilding,you need to leap beyond that range. It's certainly reasonable to write saying two are better than one,but being positive about building taller,not one inch shorter for any reason,is important at this point. The Post notes that the Port Authority process is proceeding, and of course they too need Tower-ward pushes from the public: http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/50879.htm The planning process is supposed to come up with three Phase II plans in January that take elements of the designs being submitted now...at which point the plan is to have our own architectural competition produce three tall-tower designs. In any case we need to make sure that heroic height is seen as the thing most people are united in favor of. Jennifer Thorpe has been gaining some success in obtaining professional/academic support for our architectural competition. Those to whom the draft program has been circulated are urged to get your comments in NOW so it can be finalized and published. I recently heard from Lawrence Russo of American Spirit Tower, and he mentioned that his impression was that the Lower Manhattan people were more pro-Towers than the Port Authority...quite the opposite of the impression I and many pro-rebuilders had had, though the Post article above *might* be evidence for it (the Silverstein plan is also five buildings in an L across streets from the old footprints). We know what we must have,though,and we must not stop speaking up in favor of it until we get it). Westfield America,the retail-space master lessees at the WTC site,are pushing for large scale development,and can use some encouragement at americatrust@westfield.com. The more office space on the site,the more customers for their retail space,and they don't want the site carved up for streets or left empty for contemplation.Jonathan Hakala has been noting on the web boards that they can be an important ally. Do not confuse Westfield with Brookfield,the WFC/One Liberty real estate outfit. Alex Butziger has found two sites of interest...newly linked from our resource page at http://www.put.com/wtc/ is http://110again.org/ and a good article is at http://www.paragraphics.com/September11/RJNforget.html . I've added the key people to the email list,like anyone else they can be removed immediately on request. The list archive,always a few mailings behind the present in case time-sensitive information is best kept from the anti-rebuilders,is at http://www.put.com/wtc/archive.html . See you on the 111th floor on 9-11-11! -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.