Spire plan chosen for World Trade Centre site

A complex of angular buildings and a 1,776ft spire designed by Berlin-based architect Daniel Libeskind has been chosen as the plan for the World Trade Centre site.

Libeskind’s design yesterday beat the THINK team’s ”World Cultural Centre” plan, which envisaged two 1,665ft latticework towers straddling the footprints of the original towers destroyed in the September 11 2001 terror attacks.

The choice was made by a committee with representatives of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the governor and the mayor.

Both Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg favoured the Libeskind plan, an important factor in the decision, a source close to the process told the Associated Press news agency.

LMDC chairman John Whitehead telephoned Libeskind with the news, the source said, telling the architect that his ”vision has brought hope and inspiration to a city still recovering from a terrible tragedy”.

Libeskind, 57, had no official comment on the announcement, but he told the LMDC chairman that being selected was “a life-changing experience”, the source said.

Libeskind, whose firm is based in Berlin, has estimated the cost of building his design at €330m.

Nine proposals for redeveloping the trade centre site, where nearly 2,800 people died, were unveiled on December 18. The design competition was launched after an initial set of plans, released in July, was derided as boring and overstuffed with office space.

The two finalists each featured buildings surpassing Malaysia’s 1,483ft Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest in the world. The World Trade Centre towers stood 1,350ft tall.

Redevelopment officials were due to announce the decision publicly today.

LMDC spokesman Matt Higgins said only that the committee met for 45 minutes last night and unanimously decided on a plan.

After the two plans were chosen as finalists earlier this month, both teams of architects were asked to revise their designs to make them more easily realised.

Libeskind, whose original design called for a memorial at the trade centre foundation 70 feet below ground, reportedly changed that to 30 feet, allowing for infrastructure and transportation underneath.

The source said the plan could be slightly altered to accommodate victims’ relatives, who told redevelopment officials they did not approve of plans to build parking areas at the base of the 70ft pit.

The parking areas would be for memorial visitors, not general public parking, but Pataki has told planners to ”find an accommodation” that the families would approve, the source said.