TWO OF Britain’s leading architects presented their plans yesterday to remake the New York skyline with crystalline skyscrapers rising on the site of the World Trade Centre.
Lord Foster of Thames Bank will plant diamonds in the sky above Manhattan with a sloping roof, divided into four, atop his 78-storey office tower at Ground Zero.
Lord Rogers of Riverside picked up the motif with diamond-shaped structural braces running up the side of his adjacent 71-storey tower, across the street from the planned World Trade Centre memorial garden.
Designs for the two skyscrapers, along with a third by Fumihiko Maki, of Japan, were made public yesterday as part of a renewed effort to rebuild the 16acre site five years after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
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The three architects got their conceptual designs done within a four-month deadline by working together.
“It was a great experience. I did not think it would work in the beginning, but it worked brilliantly,” Lord Rogers told The Times.
The three skyscrapers form part of a five-tower ensemble rising up to the site’s signature 1,776ft (540m) Freedom Tower designed by David Childs — a homage to the date of America’s declaration of independence.
Lord Foster, who designed the “Gherkin” Swiss Re building in the City of London, explained that he had sheared the roof of his 1,254ft (380m) cruciform tower so that it angles down towards the planned memorial garden below.
“The skyline of New York for me is inseparable from these iconic buildings — the Chrysler Building, the Empire State,” he said. “The pinnacle of this building is in that tradition.”
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Lord Rogers, the architect of the Millennium Dome and the Pompidou Centre, said that he wanted his 1,155ft (350m) Ground Zero building to be “legible” so that the public could see how it was built. It will have a three-level glass lobby with a “big picture window” right on to the planned World Trade Centre Memorial.
The presentation of the plans offered some relief for New York’s frayed nerves before the fifth anniversary of the attacks on Monday. In a poll published yesterday, 69 per cent of New Yorkers said that they were very concerned about another attack — down only slightly from 74 per cent in October 2001.
The rebuilding of the World Trade Centre site, where 2,749 people died, has been plagued by disputes among developers and government officials as well as protest by victims’ families upset about the memorial.
So far, the only structures built at Ground Zero are the unexceptional 52-storey glass replacement for 7 World Trade Centre and a temporary commuter train station.
Although the foundation stone of the Freedom Tower was laid amid great fanfare, on July 4, 2004, it later had to be moved aside to accommodate design changes made to protect it from a possible car bombing.
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The planned memorial, featuring waterfalls running into square voids where the twin towers once stood, has also had difficulties. It is now due to open in 2009, but only after officials ordered a redesign to half the projected $1 billion cost.
Sheldon Silver, the chairman of the New York State Assembly, observed at yesterday’s ceremony: “There are still many challenges ahead, many issues to be addressed before we can start patting each other on the back.”