WTC Towers Memorial
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007) |
Twin Towers II is a design by engineering graduate Kenneth Gardner and architect Herbert Belton (deceased). Twin Towers II is 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.[citation needed]
Contents |
[edit] Summary
This plan highlights two street-level footprint memorials with replicated facades of the original Twin Towers, re-engineered 111 floor twin towers resembling the originals in form but with technologically improved structural features including state-of-the-art safety design.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] This plan is designed with less office space than the official site plan, Memory Foundations.[citation needed]
[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).[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] 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 Trump, who formally announced his preference of the plan's design over the Freedom Tower's design at a press conference in Trump Tower on 18 May 2005. Other advocates of the Twin Towers II plan included Steve Forbes, David Shuster (MSNBC), Deroy Murdock (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.[1]
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 The September 11 attacks.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] 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 affected by the 9/11 terrorist attack.[citation needed] Others have also believed that if the World Trade Center was rebuilt, it would also be possible that the events of 9/11 will happen again considering that the towers have been endangered in the past.[citation needed]
[edit] Major donors
The foundation building the memorial made public on June 1, 2005 a list of the largest donors, including:
- New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg ~ $15 million
- Deutsche Bank AG ~ $15 million
- David Rockefeller ~ $15 million
- The Starr Foundation ~ $25 million
- Forest City Ratner Co. ~ $5 million
- Larry Silverstein ~ $5 million
- Consolidated Edison ~ $10 million
- Verizon ~ $10 million
- Merrill Lynch ~ $10 million
- American Express ~ $10 million
- Goldman Sachs ~ $10 million[2]
