Skyscrapers that soar higher than the original World Trade Center buildings and a variety of memorial parks and places hallmark the designs created by the seven teams of well-known architects, engineers, artists, and urban planners entrusted with developing plans for rebuilding Lower Manhattan. On December 18, they presented nine (the team THINK created three plans) highly distinctive and original designs for the 16-acre site. Each plan includes memorials, a mass-transit hub, and museums and cultural spaces. Four of the designs include proposals for the tallest building in the world. Models of the new plans will be on public display in New York City's Winter Garden from December 20 through February 3, 2003. At the conclusion of the program, John Whitehead, LMDC chair, thanked the teams “from the bottom of our hearts” and noted it would be a “tough job” to develop a single plan from the ones just unveiled.

More on the designs
Take a few moments to view the designs online at the LMDC Web site, www.renewnyc.org.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled his vision for Lower Manhattan late last week. Read about his ideas in Newsday.

Read more about the plans in these news stories:
• From the New York Times: “At Ground Zero, the Freshest Architecture May Be the Answer,” by Herbert Muschamp, New York Times.

• From Newsday: “WTC Plans Unveiled.”

• From MSNBC: “Visions for WTC site unveiled.” (MSNBC features taped footage of the presentations.)

• From CNN: “New York Unveils New WT Plans.”

• From the Los Angeles Times: “New Designs for World Trade Center Unveiled.”

Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.