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WTC (Reconstruction Plans)
Six land-use plans, created under Port Authority guidelines, were released in July 2002 to great public scorn. The guidelines demanded that all commercial space destroyed had to be replaced even while streets were opened through the site, greatly limiting the possible designs. However one of the most popular options, rebuilding the Twin Towers, was ignored by authorities, partly at the insistence of WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein. He is not comfortable with new office buildings taller than 70 floors and dreads the short-to-medium term vacancy risk of rebuilding the giant Twin Towers. His chief architect, David Childs of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, publicly denounced the original Twin Towers and the superblock as out of place and lacking in street activity or aesthetics. The July 2002 designs met with near-universal disapproval, forcing the government to restart the design process nearly from scratch but with the same guidelines.Seven new designs were presented and winnowed to two candidates, one from Studio Daniel Libeskind, and one from the THINK architectural group, led by Rafael Vi?oly, Shigeru Ban, Frederic Schwartz, and Ken Smith.On February 26, 2003, Studio Daniel Libeskind's design was announced as the winning design. The design includes office buildings and a Wedge of Light which he claimed would honor the victims of the terrorist attacks by allowing sunlight into the footprint of the towers between 8:46AM and 10:28AM EST every September 11; shadow analysis has cast great doubt on this. Also the footprint of the towers will be largely preserved amid a huge sunken pit. Planning review continues, with many citizen groups of many angles strongly opposed to proceeding with this plan for various reasons. The Libeskind proposal includes a 541 m - 1776-foot high tower. The chosen height in feet is a reference to 1776, the year that the United States Declaration of Independence was signed. In July, Larry Silverstein, whose real estate company was given the lease to the WTC two months before the September 11 attacks, convinced Libeskind to hire David Childs of Skidmore Owings & Merrill as a co-architect of the proposed 1,776-foot tower, which Governor Pataki calls the 'Freedom Tower'. A draft design for the tower released December 19, 2003 has already encountered stiff criticism and as of January 2005 it was still unclear that building the spire according to the Libeskind design was even possible. In May 2005 a thorough redesign of the tower was ordered after safety concerns raised by the police department. Donald Trump raised eyebrows in May 2005 when he endorsed rebuilding the site with the Twin Towers 2 alternative rebuilding plan, and in June 2005 was one of the first to sign its petition to encourage Pataki, Bloomberg, Silverstein, and the Port Authority to re-think the unpopular Freedom Tower design and consider rebuilding the towers. |
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