WTC Reconstruction:
7 EARLY PROPOSALS

Foster and Partners
"The crystalline tower is based on triangular geometries-cross-cultural symbols of harmony, wisdom, purity, unity and strength. Its two halves kiss at three points, creating public observation platforms, exhibits, cafes and other amenities."

Meier and Partners
"The two buildings comprised of five vertical sections and interconnecting horizontal floors, represent a new typology in the tradition of innovative skyscraper design. In their quiet abstraction, the buildings suggest screens of presence and absence, encouraging reflection and imagination. The cantilevered ends extend outward, like the fingers of the ground plan, reaching toward the city and each other. Nearly touching at the northeast corner of the site, they resemble the interlaced fingers of protective hands."

Peterson/Littenberg
"The heart of the district is a special Public Garden, whose shape and geometry are generated by the WTC tower footprints.... The garden is sunken below the streets and located behind the adjacent blocks. It serves as an inner courtyard for the whole city, a place of refuge. The garden contains an open amphitheater on the North Tower footprint with 2,797 seats, one for each victim of the tragedy. Underneath the theater, at bedrock, is the museum to the events of September 11."

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
"Our proposal is to reconnect the city by creating a dense grid of vertical structures that support multiple strata of public and cultural spaces. Our vision is one that moves beyond the historical drive to build high only in order to maximize the limited resource of land, it is one that builds to multiply that very resource for the greater public. Our proposal covers 16 acres, and in turn, returns those 16 acres twice, by providing within its various horizontal strata, 16 acres of sky gardens and an additional 16 acres of cultural space."

Studio Libeskind
"The sky will be home again to a towering spire of 1776 feet high, the "Gardens of the World". Why gardens? Because gardens are a constant affirmation of life. A skyscraper rises above its predecessors, reasserting the pre-eminence of freedom and beauty, restoring the spiritual peak to the city, creating an icon that speaks of our vitality in the face of danger and our optimism in the aftermath of tragedy."
See pictures of the Studio Libeskind Design

United Architects
"The entire site is a monument to the tragedy of 9/11 consisting of an interconnected series of five buildings that creates a cathedral-like enclosure across the entire 16 acre site. A vast public plaza and park is formed around the connected footprints by a protective ring of towers. A living memorial will develop over time becoming both a monument to the past and a vision for the future."