Ground Zero officials yesterday chose two designs with radically different points of view as finalists in the hunt for a site plan – one looking down into the Ground Zero pit, the other looking up at the sky.
Working with the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the Port Authority, the two teams of architects will now be asked to make some revisions in their plans – and one will be chosen as a final site designer later this month.
The design by Berlin-based architect Daniel Libeskind leaves a large area of the Trade Center pit open as a site for a Sept. 11 memorial, although it also includes a museum, office towers and the world’s tallest building in the form of a vertical greenhouse.
The other plan, by architects Rafael Vinoly and Fred Schwartz, whose team is called THINK, is centered around two latticework towers – the tallest structures in the world – that are largely empty, except for a museum, theaters, a memorial space and other cultural facilities suspended within them.
LMDC Chairman John Whitehead said the plans emerged as favorites from among the designs of seven teams of architects submitted in December because they did the best job of creating “a fitting setting for the memorial” and restoring “the majesty of the . . . skyline.”
LMDC board member Roland Betts said the designs will go through “a rigorous period of review and modification to make sure that each plan . . . actually works” – although “the core idea of each plan will be preserved.”
Pointing to the kinds of changes that will be expected, officials said the THINK team will be asked to address structural concerns with its tower foundations.
Libeskind also will be asked to address structural problems with leaving the pit empty, and may be asked to come up with a design in which the hole goes down less than half as deep as it is today.
Betts said the lower area of the pit may be needed to hold not only the PATH train station that being rebuilt, but also other structures, such as a bus depot or parking garage.
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These names were added yesterday to the medical examiner’s list of confirmed dead in the World Trade Center attacks: Elvira Grannito, 43; Timothy Ray Ward, 38.
DANIEL LIBESKIND
* Much of WTC pit is left open, down to bedrock, for memorial
* Spiky glass tower, with vertical botanic garden, rises 1,776 feet
* Five starkly geometrical towers and several smaller cultural buildings clustered around pit
* Public places include Park of Heroes and Wedge of Light, where each year, on anniversary of 9/11, sun will shine without shadow between hours of first and second attacks
* Elevated promenade encircles memorial site
NYPOST.COM web poll results 53.7%
THINK
* “World Cultural Center” features 1,665 foot towers resembling skeletons of original two
* Two separate open latticework structures above and around footprints of WTC towers
* Multiple memorial sites, including atop towers and at base, in footprints of original Twin Towers
* Transportation center, eight independent midrise office buildings and hotel on perimeter of site
* Two large-scale turbines harvest wind to power transportation center’s elevators
NYPOST.COM web poll results 46.3%