Designs with impact on current architectural theory

The various designs for Ground Zero reflect the way in which the invited architects have dealt with this unusual assignment and should not be seen as concrete plans for this vacant site. It was this starting position that enabled participating architects to come up with serious, innovative and imaginative approaches to redesigning the location and prompted fundamental considerations in the field of current architectural theory. The works shown are characterized not only by the remembrance of the attack and plans for future commercial use but also by the search for new forms and content for this complex location. This provisionally designed exhibition, that has already attracted considerable media and public attention both in the United States and in Europe, is thus at once a collection of ideas for redesigning Lower Manhattan and a laboratory for current architecture-related questions.

Approaches

Accordingly, not only Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind but also the NOX bureau and the young architects at Foreign Office Architects take issue with the tower block as a type, designing buildings that they believe are better suited to the new organizational structures of today's working environment. Others, such as German architect Frei Ott reject the idea of commercial use, earmarking the area for the kind of large monument that will particularly highlight the location's symbolic significance for the victims' families. Other proposals suggest reestablishing small-town structures in downtown Manhattan in order to counteract the kind of vertically-oriented urban developments called into question by the attack. American architect Michael Graves, for example, confronts visitors to the exhibition with an historical town plan of the area, and Hans Hollein uses a drawing dating from 1963 to make a plea for connecting elements between the existing skyscrapers.

One design also presented at "A New World Trade Center" as a computer animation has already been implemented. On March 11, six months after the attack on the Twin Towers, two towers of light produced by a group led by John Bennett reestablished for a brief period the illusion of an intact Manhattan skyline.