I've been meaning to write about the latest World Trade Center reconstruction proposals for some time now, and with the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation "decision" expected any day now, this is probably a good time to do so. (I put decision in quotation marks because the LMDC won't be definitively committing to a single proposal; more likely, they will select one or two to be futher explored and refined. A separate design process is being held for the memorial portion of the site, so that question remains open as well, although it obviously will have to exist within the context of whatever is developed for the overall site.) If you haven't seen the seven new proposals, you can explore them here.

I think my present favorite is the proposal submitted by Daniel Libeskind, with it's beautiful vertical "gardens of the world" that seem to echo the proud thrust of the Statue of Liberty. Apparently the gap between the garden tower and the tower proper will illuminate the Heroes Park specifically on the morning of September 11th each year, although I can't envision yet exactly how this happens. Libeskind's introduction eloquently expresses an immigrant's deep emotion for the city, and he seems to have an innate sense of the process of memorialization, as shown in his work for the Jewish Museum in Berlin and others. Norman Foster's proposal is certainly striking, and will appeal to the brash New Yorkers who favor rebuilding bigger and better. To me, though, the sheer size and monumentality of his proposal (the towers would be some 40 stories taller than their predecessors; Brobdingnagian has been the favored adjective used to describe it, real-world conceptions of the immense evidently being inadequate) comes off as more of a dare to would-be terrorists than anything else. Additionally, the looming question still remains: will anyone choose to be a tenant in such a building after the horrors of 9/11? In the February 3rd issue of The New Republic, architecture critic Martin Filler likens the proposal to the Tower of Babel, and I'm afraid I agree with him:

If the image of the twin towers is to be preserved, I prefer the THINK proposal, which revives the two towers as open-air mesh structures, with a number of "buildings" embedded inside at various heights, although the bulk of the structure is left open. Herbert Muschamp calls it "...a work of genius, a towering affirmation of humanism in modern times," which may be a bit hyperbolic, but he discusses it at further length here.

There have been some slightly more off-beat proposals for the site as well. Richard Linklater, director of the movie "Slacker", has proposed to leave the site empty, except for a 16-acre park filled with roaming buffalo. New York Metro has collected proposals submitted by readers also.