WTC Towers Memorial
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Twin Towers II is a design by engineering graduate Kenneth Gardner and architect Herbert Belton (deceased). Twin Towers II is considered an alternative site plan for rebuilding New York City's World Trade Center site destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. In February 2003, Memory Foundations was officially chosen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation as the site plan to rebuild the former World Trade Center site.
[edit] Summary
This plan highlights two (2) street level footprint memorials with replicated facades of the original Twin Towers, re-engineered 111 floors twin towers resembling the originals in form but with technologically improved structural features including state-of-the-art safety design. Other features to the plan are a 9/11 museum, a center for education and the arts, a luxury residence hotel and retail space designed to complement the downtown neighborhood community. This plan is designed with less office space than the official site plan, Memory Foundations.
[edit] Opinions
The overall plan for new Twin Towers has consistently been preferred in various public opinion polls from 2002 to the present (typical poll). A major driver of early public sentiment favoring the plan was opposition to the original design of the Freedom Tower, which as a single tower replacing two, and with fewer inhabitable floors than the originals (topped by a skeletal latticework and antenna technically allowing the tower to claim a greater height than its predecessors), was seen by some as a symbolic chastening, humbling, or surrender to fear in the face of terrorism. Other Twin Towers II supporters are driven by a desire to rebuild what they see as an iconic symbol of New York and America in recognizable form; this thought facilitates the process of resilient healing while demonstrating the futility of the attacks as terrorist acts. After extended controversy, the original Freedom Tower plan with the latticework and unusual twisted shape was dropped in favor of a more conventional design that is reminiscent of the original North Tower. Twin Towers II's most prominent endorsement came from New York real estate developer Donald J. Trump, who formally announced his preference of the plan's design over the Freedom Tower's design at a press conference in Trump Tower (New York) on 18 May 2005. Other advocates of the Twin Towers II plan include Steve Forbes, David Shuster (MSNBC), Deroy Murdock [1] (National Review), Nicole Gelinas (New York Post) , John Avalon (New York Sun) as well as several grass roots organizations primarily established to support the growing effort to rebuild the Twin Towers.
Designs for rebuilding the Twin Towers or any skyscraper/s above 80 stories were categorically rejected from the official design competition by government officials and agencies charged with the responsibility of redesigning and rebuilding the former World Trade Center site after the events of 9/11/01. Other opinion felt that rebuilding the towers was too much of a traumatic reminder of the events of 9/11 while others, including critics of architecture, heard the call to update the site with 21st century building design. Others still saw rebuilding the Twin Towers as an impractical imposition of concentrated office space for the community around the lower Manhattan site; a community and neighborhood severely impacted by the 9/11 terrorist attack.
