The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 129

Since the logjam was broken last week with an agreement between Silverstein and the Port Authority, not only has prepartory work gone forward (it had been ongoing for several weeks before the agreement was reached, but not widely publicized), Silverstein has now announced who else will be involved in the design of the skyscrapers within his mandate.

Richard Rogers will be designing Tower 3 and Fumihiko Maki is to design Tower 4 at 150 Greenwich Street.

The design work on both Tower 3 and Tower 4 will begin immediately, Silverstein Properties said, with concept drawings due in four months and construction expected to start in 2007.

Given the squabbles that have repeatedly delayed reconstruction at ground zero, such projections are likely to be treated with skepticism. And some planners have questioned whether a coherent aesthetic can emerge at a site involving so many cooks.

In addition to Daniel Libeskind, who designed the master plan for the site, architects include David C. Childs, designer of a so-called Freedom Tower; Norman Foster, chosen in December to design Tower 2; Michael Arad, creator of a proposed ground zero memorial; Santiago Calatrava, whose PATH station is now rising at the site; and Frank Gehry, who was drafted to design a performing arts center.

Where to start with this. Libeskind's master plan has been revised so many times that one has to wonder whether you could call it his plan. Childs is designing the Freedom Tower, which itself has gone through several revisions from Libeskind's original design to the current obelisk on a pedestal. Of the architects involved, the ones I have the most faith in are Calatrava and Foster, whose designs are energetic and dynamic, not to mention eyecatching. Mr. Maki's background includes:

... Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1993, only the second Japanese architect to do so, after Kenzo Tange in 1987. In its citation the Pritzker jury wrote, "He is a modernist who has fused the best of both Eastern and Western cultures."

In Manhattan, Mr. Maki is also designing a 35-story expansion of the United Nations that would also allow for the renovation of the Secretariat building and supplant the Robert Moses Playground on First Avenue.

If the name Richard Rogers sounds familiar, that's because it should. He's the architect involved in redesigning and expanding the Javits Center a few miles north of Ground Zero and he had allowed his offices to be used to organize architects to boycott doing projects in Israel. As I noted at the time of that post, even if Rogers didn't subscribe to all the ideas mentioned at the meeting, the fact that he allowed his offices to be used for the meeting would have sent Javits spinning in his grave (Javits was a staunch supporter of Israel).

UPDATE:
Curbed has a visual key to the site - putting names and faces to each of the major Ground Zero components. They also note that a number of federal agencies are being wooed to be housed in the Freedom Tower, including DHS, FBI, and other law enforcement agencies. Gothamist has more. The LMDC factsheet on the Freedom Tower coyly notes that preliminary work had already begun before the Silverstein-PA agreement had become public. I'd noted previously that PATH service was being adjusted beginning April 9, 2006, because of the need to engage in preparatory work.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center, spitzer, silverstein.