Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe NEW YORK, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- City and state officials announced today that a Berlin-based architectural firm's design for a complex of angular commercial and cultural buildings topped by the world's tallest spire has been chosen for the redevelopment of the terrorist-destroyed World Trade Center. The spire will rise above one of the glass-sheathed office buildings a symbolic 1,776 feet, 416 feet higher than the Twin Towers that were leveled by airplane attack by Muslim fundamentalist terrorist on Sept. 11, 2001. The architect, Daniel Libeskind, said its spiraling design topped by an antenna was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, which he first saw when he arrived in New York harbor as a youth with his Polish émigré parents aboard the S.S. Constitution. Advertisement The Libeskind Studio design conception was selected by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation with the approval of city, state, federal, and New York-New Jersey Port Authority officials over the architectural plan of a New York architectural group known as Think. The field of nine architectural firms that originally vied for the design commission had been reduced to six and then to the Libeskind Studio and the Think group headed by Rafael Vinoly. Advertisement Vinoly's design was for two latticed towers of stainless steel with some cultural spaces and hanging gardens, was thought to be more beautiful than practical by many critics. Libeskind publicly dismissed the Vinoly plan as "two skeletons in the sky" and Vinoly had described Libeskind's plan as "another Jerusalem Wailing Wall." Libeskind, a naturalized American citizen who studied at New York's Cooper Union, is best known for his design of the new Jewish Museum in Berlin, and he maintains his offices there with a partner, his wife Nina. Both were present for the formal announcement Thursday of the award to their firm at the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center adjoining the World Trade Center site. Gov. George Pataki said the Libeskind Studio had been chosen at a meeting of all concerned parties, including representative of the families of the Sept. 11 disaster victims, on Wednesday evening. Lou Tomson, president of the development corporation said reaching a consensus had been "difficult," although both Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg were reported to have favored the Libeskind design. Pataki described the design selection as "the end of the beginning" of a long process of architectural revisions and construction, which may take 10 years to complete. Advertisement "But when it is finished, it will be a symbol that will reach into the sky to tell the terrorists they have failed," the governor said. Bloomberg noted that it would be the 10th time in the city's history that it could claim the world's highest structure. The office space in the spiral will rise only to the 110th floor level that will be occupied by a restaurant. Near the top of the tower will be sky gardens that are actually mini-ecosystems called Gardens of the World including collections of flora from jungles, deserts, savannas, and alpine tundras. "This will be a symbol of remembrance and renewal integrated into a revitalized Lower Manhattan," Bloomberg said. Libeskind, whose heavy black-rimmed glasses give him a professorial look, made an illustrated presentation showing how his renewal plan will center a new area of commercial and cultural activity that will vie with Midtown Manhattan for importance. It will include a new underground cultural hub for ferries, subways, railroads, and buses that will receive natural lighting from light walls in above-ground structures that will occupy only a small part of the 4.7 acre Ground Zero memorial site. The site enclosing the "footprints" of the Twin Towers will be framed by the surviving slurry walls that protected the 60-foot deep site from Hudson River water. The depth has been reduced to 30 feet, the first major revision in the Libeskind plan, and area will be reserved for a memorial to the disaster dead still to be designed. There are several other parks included in the plan, including Liberty Park and the Park of Heroes. Advertisement Buildings flanking the site will include a hotel, a memorial museum and a performing arts center with a 2,200-seat theater, possibly a new home for the New York City Opera that wants out of the acoustically inferior New York State Theater at Lincoln Center. The arts center would open out onto a grand open-air space called Sept. 11 Plaza. Offices and retail space will be connected with the memorial site by ramps. Although no reliable dollar estimate can be made of the cost of Libeskind's project, he said development of public spaces and reinforcement of the slurry walls should cost about $330 million and framework of the cultural buildings should cost about $800 million. Development of potential commercial and housing sites will fall to realtor Larry Silverstein, leaseholder of the World Trade Center site. The Libeskind plan calls for 8.6 million square feet of office space, 780,000 square feet of cultural space, and 1,750 apartments.
