Freedom Tower to replace Twin Towers

A NEW design for what will be the world’s tallest building has been unveiled in New York showing a structure with a gracefully sloping spire rising 1,776 feet.

The plan for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Centre which comes after months of contentious negotiations between designers Daniel Libeskind and David Childs retains many elements of Libeskind's original plan but appears to smooth out its most angular elements.

"We owe it to the heroes who died on September 11 and as an expression of our confidence in the future to have this soaring tribute to the memory of the heroes we lost and to freedom," Governor George Pataki said.

The two architects reached a compromise design after months of feuding over the tower that will rise at the World Trade Centre site. The tower is to include 70 storeys of office space and a 276ft spire.

The project will take 10 years and cost $12bn, leaseholder Larry Silverstein, said. He estimated the redevelopment effort would generate up to $19bn in economic activity and provide 10,000 construction jobs for each year of the work.

Upon completion, the new trade center complex will have an estimated annual economic impact of $15.7bn and generate 75,000 full-time jobs in Lower Manhattan. Silverstein said the cornerstone of the redeveloped site's centrepiece a 1,776ft high tower should be laid before next year's third anniversary of the attacks.

The tower to replace the destroyed twin towers that had been a landmark of the Manhattan skyline will be topped out at the end of 2008 and the last of four other office towers is slated for completion in 2013.

"This is going to be the most spectacular community to live and work in once the World Trade Center has been rebuilt," he added. Silverstein is currently locked in a bitter legal battle with the insurers, who say they will pay only half of his $7bn dollar claim.

The case will go to federal court in February.