[finnman69]

Ok, here's my architectural opinion in this.

I have been disappointed with almost all of the schemes. Personally I liked the Foster scheme the best (twin linked triangular towers).

The Liebskind scheme was picked because it is the most flexible, and will be THE EASIEST TO CHANGE. The Port Authority already wants to add a bus garage at the bottom of the bathtub. PA engineers also have announced that the existing bathtub walls will have to be covered up and protected from the elements or they will degrade. So, by covering up the bathtub walls you wipe out the concept of leaving the walls visible as a testament to their strength. Frankly they are fragile and have to be protected from the weather.

I also have issue with creating a huge memorial plaza 75' down in a hole. This is NYC, NYers and tourists go out of their way to avoid public plazas that involve more than 2 steps up or down. Bad concept. Some of the worst public plazas in NYC are located up or down a level. Holes in the ground do not make for inviting public spaces, plus they act as huge urban barriers that block the paths of pedestrians.

The towers themselves are pie in the sky if you don't build commercial spaceto pay for the rebuilding costs. I think the garden in the sky sounds nice, but in truth will be very very costly. Is the best use for the top of the tower a 1776' elevator ride so you can ride down escalators through an atrium garden? Comments?

The forms of the towers can be ok, and I love having the tallest building back in NYC. The bizarre angular cystaline facade detail expressed in the renderings is awful however. It will be worse in reality. I know he tends to mfavor angular random crystaline shapes, but an expression that suggests deconstructed facades and worse, recalls the jutting, twisted wreckage of the original WTC is in very poor taste. I also think the guy is color blind.

I also predict that Liebskind will eventually quit the commission as he is forced to compromise and modify his design. He has a terrible reputation as a theorist and an idealist. He is not a pragmatist. Much of his work is as yet unbuilt. Just check his website to see how bizarre he is (weblink below). Wait till he has to deal with real commercial developers, the Port Authority, prospective tenants, and City Planning. I see major fireworks coming. Almost all of his buildings have been museums. He has ZERO commercial experience.

People here shoud really educate themselves as to what Liebskind's buildings REALLY look like. They are very very ugly. Check the site below.

http://www.daniel-libeskind.com/projects/index.html

[ARCADIA]

I agree the thing looks neither practical nor graceful.

The original buildings were borish boxes, twin monuments to the office cubicle, but at least they were what they were meant to be.

I really wouldn't give priority to the tourist, or the 3000 families of the WTC victims. This is a major down town project which should be developed to strengthen lower Manhattan, the city, and perhaps even the country. Yes we should memorialize the original site, but it should be an memorial and not an all encompassing theme. We have millions of people commutting to and working in the financial district every day, and there is little in this structure to cater to them. Where is the multi-million Sq. feet of retail space to create a first rate shopping facility? Why not include a new sports arena, several hotels, a major theater facility, or several? Vast public parking facilities would be a nice plus, a good attraction for the facility and a positive gain for the district, have we included that?

This building lacks purpose. It is designed like an oversized public monument; a purpose made costly boondoggle. There is an opportunity to add attractive and productive space and this does too little of either. It should be grand, and it should be massive; but, it should also be productive and useful.

For years I use to commute through the original WTC without ever stopping to look up. Perhaps once every few years I would ride the elevators up to the observation deck to snap a picture or two, and ever so often I would stop by one of the lower newstands to buy a newspaper or snack. Beyond that the original WTC did little for me. It may have been a great tourist attraction, but, it wasn't much of a destination. I am hoping we can change that this time around. We should turn the WTC into the new town square for NYC, and perhaps for the US too.

[NYC GOP Chick]

I think you should have been appointed to do this. Either that or they should just break out the original plans and makes whatever safety modifications and whatnot would be necessary.

[equus]

I disagree.
I think this design is beautiful, imaginative, and will become a great tourist spot.

The old towers were totally unimaginative & look how attached we got to them. The idea of vertical gardens--everyone will come view them. It's a kind of living museum and a wonderful metaphor.

[Aquinasfan]

I think the garden in the sky sounds nice, but in truth will be very very costly. Is the best use for the top of the tower a 1776' elevator ride so you can ride down escalators through an atrium garden? Comments?

This is the best feature and essence of the design. If the garden falls, so does the rest of the design. It's a wonderfully creative idea. I've never heard of anything comparable. OK, so it's not going to generate a lot of income per square foot, but this is the site of 9/11. A memorial is appropriate to the site, especially a life-affirming memorial "in the sky."

I don't mind the idea of angular buildings. Steel frame construction and computer-assisted design should enable to architects to break out of the box of boxy buildings. The garden in the sky is the best example of that. But other aspects of the design aren't just angled, they're mangled. Angular for the sake of angularity isn't any better than boxy for the sake of boxiness. Beauty should be the primary design consideration.

The fact that many of the buildings look like quartz, a naturally occuring substance, should ease fears that this is simply modern nonsense, even if the architect is driven by modernist architectural ideas. In other words, the answer may be right even if the architects motives are wrong.

Still, the buildings look more like shards of glass than quartz prisms. That's simply inappropriate. The buildings would look better and more natural if they were polygonal.

Overall, the buildings are futuristic looking, appropriately enough. The overall design should paradoxically memorialize the disaster by boldly looking forward. Overcoming adversity, dispensing with non-essential traditions and stepping boldly into the future are ideas that represent some of the best characteristics of the American spirit.