Twin Towers II

[Jeannette Latoria]

This is my preferred plan for the rebuilding at Ground Zero.  It is also the preferred plan of most New Yorkers.  Donald Trump supports it also! 

Since very little work has been done at the site, it is my hope that it happens, eventually.

What is the plan for Twin Towers II?

Build the towers up, only stronger, just like they were before!

[Jeannette Latoria]

Twin Towers II

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.

[Jeannette Latoria]

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. 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. This plan is designed with less office space than the official site plan, Memory Foundations

[Jeannette Latoria]

Opinions

The overall plan for new Twin Towers has consistently been preferred in various public opinion polls from 2002 to the present (typical poll).  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. 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. 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 (New York) 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.

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 9/11/01. 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. 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 impacted by the 9/11 terrorist attack. 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.

[Jeannette Latoria]

Twin Towers II
• Height: Two 1,475-foot towers, one with a 383-foot mast.
• Site: 300 feet east of the original towers' footprints.
• Workspace: 112 to 115 floors each
• Memorial: Museum would feature a "Hall of Heroes," with a glass tower of meditation on the northeast side.

[Jeannette Latoria]

Trump offers plan to rebuild twin towers
May 19, 2005 - 6:43AM




Real estate developer Donald Trump next to a nine-foot model of his proposed Twin Towers II
Photo: AFP

New York property tycoon Donald Trump unveiled his design Wednesday for "bigger, stronger and better" twin towers to replace the World Trade Centre originals destroyed on September 11, 2001.

Denouncing the existing plans for rebuilding Ground Zero as the "worst pile of crap architecture I've ever seen," Trump argued that erecting two new, even taller twin towers was the only valid response to the terrorists.

The consummate self-promoter, known as "The Donald," showed off his proposal just weeks after the official master design was put on hold because of security concerns surrounding the centrepiece 1,776 foot Freedom Tower.

Describing the Freedom Tower as an "empty skeleton," Trump said its construction would be a capitulation.

"If we rebuild the World Trade Centre in the form of a skeleton ... the terrorists win. It's that bad," he told reporters gathered in the lobby of his Fifth Avenue Trump Towers headquarters in Manhattan.

The design put forward by Trump and his structural engineer Kenneth Gardner, essentially offers a modified version of the original twin towers, erected in the early 1970s.

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AdvertisementThe replacements would be at least 1,475-feet (449.6 m) tall, more than 100 feet (30.1 m) higher than their previous incarnations. The new North Tower would also boast a 383-foot (116.7 m) communications mast.

"It's bigger, it's stronger and it's better than the previous World Trade Centre, and it sets the right tone and the right attitude," Trump said, adding that some members of the public who had seen the model had been moved to tears.

Charles Wolf, whose wife was killed in the North Tower, was more circumspect in his appraisal of the model.

"It spooked me when I first saw it ... the idea of the towers rising again," Wolf said.

"I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it's an interesting idea," he added.

The Trump-backed towers -- he promised not to attach his name to the buildings -- would employ a tube-within-a-tube design with improved fireproofing and larger stairwells.

Gardner said the structures would be able to withstand the kind of attacks that brought down the original towers on September 11, 2001 killing 2,479 people.

Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind, branded an "egghead" by Trump over the design of the Freedom Tower, fired off a letter to the property tycoon this week, pointing out that he was not responsible for the building's problems.

The Polish-born architect stressed that the footprint and twisting shape of the tower were the work of David Childs, who was hired by Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein to modify Libeskind's vision.

"I am sure that all of us, whatever the shape of our head or its decorative accessory agree that security is the paramount concern for the new tower," Libeskind wrote in a thinly-veiled dig at Trump's distinctive hairstyle.

In a report published in April, the New York Police Department voiced concerns that the planned location of the Freedom Tower was too close to Manhattan's Westside Highway.

A subsequent meeting between New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor George Pataki and police officials concluded that a new design was required.

"They should throw it all away," was Trump's assessment of the design rethink.

"This is what people want," he said of his own proposal. "It's a better memorial. It's a greater building. This is what the World Trade Centre was."

The Freedom Tower was originally scheduled to be topped out at the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009.

The design of the tower, and indeed that of the entire Ground Zero redevelopment project, has been the source of bitter dispute -- between the architects involved and also the often competing interests of the victims' families, the developers and the politicians.

The tensions have arisen from the different priorities attached to the project, with some seeing a site of remembrance, others a future place of work and still more a symbol of rebirth.

AFP


http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Trumping-twin-tower-design/2005/05/19/1116361642894.html?oneclick=true

[Jeannette Latoria]

Group Wants Twin Towers Rebuilt at NYC's Ground Zero
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
September 08, 2006

Clarification: Changes eighth paragraph to indicate that Margaret Donovan worked in Tower Two of the World Trade Center prior to, but not at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

(CNSNews.com) - As the nation marks the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, a group of New Yorkers is continuing its protest of the design selected to redevelop the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

Members of the Twin Towers Alliance will gather Sunday in New York City's Central Park to rally for rebuilding the Twin Towers as they stood before 9/11, in spite of the fact that construction is already underway on the Freedom Tower, a single tower that will fill the void left in Lower Manhattan.

The group says on its website that building the Freedom Tower, three additional high-rise buildings and the World Trade Center Memorial "would leave a permanent scar on the face of New York and diminish a legendary city."

Instead, it favors building towers that resemble the originals, but are slightly taller. "Nothing could be more inspiring to our people, or disheartening to our enemies, than Twin Towers," the group said.

But construction on the Freedom Tower began in April 2006. The 1,368-foot tower - which will be 44 feet taller than the original tower only because it will boast a longer spire - is expected to be completed in 2012, and city officials are firmly supporting it.

Margaret Donovan, a graphic designer and organizer for the Twin Towers Alliance, criticized the city for allegedly not paying attention to New Yorkers' wishes for redevelopment designs. She still hopes the group can convince leaders to reject the Freedom Tower in favor of twin towers.

"If people can just understand what the principle of it is, then everything else falls into place," Donovan told Cybercast News Service. "Of course we can change it."

Donovan, who worked in Tower Two the year before the attacks, said it is a "moral imperative" to "make sure that Osama bin Laden and his followers all over the world do not look at a television set and see either a blank hole and take great pride in what they were able to inflict ... or to look at something that is totally different than what it was the day before they flew into those buildings."

The best way to defy terrorists, Donovan said, is to build the same towers.

One design proposed by the Twin Towers II Memorial Foundation and supported by real estate mogul Donald Trump features two high-rises that resemble the originals but are one floor taller. Its proposal uses the "footprints" left by the original towers as the framework for memorials to the deceased, Donovan said.

"We can still have the World Trade Center we deserve," she added. "It's not wishful thinking. It's just common sense, and it's not too late."

But New York officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, strongly support the Freedom Tower design.

"For generations to come, the Freedom Tower will be a symbol of New Yorkers' resolve and a powerful beacon of freedom to people around the world," Bloomberg said in a news release issued by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), the group in charge of redeveloping Ground Zero.

Larry Silverstein, the real estate investor who holds the leases to the office space in the World Trade Center, has said in news releases that the Freedom Tower design "speaks to the government and private sector's deep and abiding commitment to rebuild New York City to the highest architectural, environmental and safety standards."

Silverstein said he is "confident that when our work is done, we will be in a position to say we have done the best job possible, and that one hundred years from now, our children's children will look back and say we made them proud."

But Donovan argued that while the new design speaks to the private sector's goals for the area, it doesn't represent what the people who experienced 9/11 want. She said most New Yorkers want twin towers.

Donovan acknowledged that evidence for the public's preference for twin towers is "mainly anecdotal," a flaw she credits to the LMDC for not scientifically polling the public before accepting a design.

John Delibero, a spokesman for the LMDC, told Cybercast News Service that there were "many community outreach plans going on. There was a lot of stuff sponsored in 2002 and 2003 by the LMDC for public opinion on what should be done with the site."

Delibero did not say if the group had commissioned scientific polls to weigh public opinion. He referred further questions to the Silverstein's office. A spokesman for Silverstein Properties did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

Donovan said she "would bet my life on the fact that if everybody could weigh in, you'd find that many more people, whether they thought they [the original towers] were attractive or they thought they weren't attractive, they loved them. They [the originals] were part of our identity."

"This is particular issue is a little bit too significant and meaningful to too many people for us to stand for it," she concluded.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstory.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200609/NAT20060908f.html

[Jeannette Latoria]

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

[Jeannette Latoria]

Rendering of TTII (Twin Towers 2)


 
Information
Location Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Status Proposed,may replace Freedom tower because of low support.
Groundbreaking April 27, 2006 (sames as FT because it would use same foundation)
Estimated completion 2012(est)
Opening 2011 (if switchover starts in 2008)
Use Office, Dining, Observation, Retail ,Housing,Communications,Hotel
Height
Antenna/Spire 574m (1883ft)
Roof 457m (1500ft)
Top floor ~457m (~1500ft)
Technical details
Floor count 115 floors
Floor area 2438400sqm (8000000+sqft)
Companies
Architect Kenneth Gardner, Herbert Belton
Developer Trump Organization, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

[Jeannette Latoria]

Fig. 1. The original 16 acre World Trade Center site prior to 9/11. The magnificent 110-story twin super skyscrapers (dark blue) sometimes cause high ground wind conditions. Of the four smaller ancillary buildings (yellow), only the hotel is considered an attractive building. The iconic Koenig Sphere and fountain (light blue circle) are near the center of an impractical, dull, and unfriendly plaza (original plans called for a more attractive and expensive plaza), and rebuilding the site could be an opportunity to correct the faults of the original plaza. Delivery vehicles entered at the south side of the site.

[Jeannette Latoria]

Fig. 2. The original Gardner concept: The two (white) original footprint memorials and the two (blue) similarly arranged new super skyscrapers (WTC 1 and WTC 2) complement each other. Other site plans are possible and the site dimensions can be increased slightly. The above shifted site plan is meaningful, forms an attractive pattern, and restores the skyline. The new twin towers are located 300 feet (91 m) 'east' and 40 feet (12 m) 'south' of the original footprints. (Just shifting the towers 300 feet (91 m) horizontally would result in a less attractive "blocky" pattern.) The new towers are above a train line and the towers and memorials are somewhat close. Footprint memorials would be based on victims' families' recommendations. Ancillary buildings are not shown. Fulton and Greenwich Streets could be above ground, underground, or eliminated. Wind and sun conditions should be considered; there will be high gusts. Entrances to the PATH and subways would be located at position C or D. The Koenig Sphere and fountain might be restored. Suggestions are welcome for possible construction at positions A, B, C, and D.

[Jeannette Latoria]

Fig. 3. Above is the site plan of the model shown on this web site. Original footprint memorials and the Memorial Plaza are based on victims' families' recommendations. WTC-1 and WTC-2 are new 115-story twin towers. Modeled on the successful Time-Warner Center, these towers are presently planned to have commercial space on the lower floors, hotel space on the middle floors, and residential and public space on the the upper floors. WTC-3, WTC-4, and WTC-5 are 12-story buildings. Streets might be underground. WTC-2 and WTC-3 are attached. WTC-5 might be replaced with a park. Church Street width might be reduced. The proposed outdoor footprint memorials and proposed Memorial Plaza are shown below.

[Jeannette Latoria]

Fig. 4. These are two different outdoor memorial designs proposed for the site plan above (west view). Most prefer the left design. The granite wall sections with the names of the deceased are not shown in this photo. An alternate proposed indoor memorial design is being considered. The optional Memorial Plaza or Park behind the curved wall was designed by a family member architect, and could be added to the Libeskind plan at a later date.

[Jeannette Latoria]

Fig. 5. A logical and practical symmetrical version of the site plan with the super block, Twin Towers, Tobin Plaza, Koenig Sphere, and fountain restored. The memorials and new towers have the same relationship to each other. This is probably the best basic site plan, and it corrects the faults of the original plaza. An upgraded Tobin Plaza (or park) buffers the site elements, provides good flow and views thru the site, is people friendly, historically meaningful, reduces morbidity at the site, and helps meet the high standards expected at a national memorial. Buildings are not above train lines, and restoring the super block without above ground streets adds quality space and negates the need for embassy building standards. Original footprint memorials and the Memorial Plaza would be based on victims' families' recommendations. WTC 1 and WTC 2 (the new twin towers) could be connected by skybridges. Wind and sun conditions should be considered. There will probably be high ground wind gusts, and site winds should be analyzed and addressed with wind tunnel testing. Fulton Street, a rail line, and/or pedestrian conveyors could run underground from east to west without impinging the north memorial. Possibly the best design for position A is the proposed Memorial Plaza shown in fig. 4 above. A memorial museum and/or park could be located at positions A or B, and the Freedom Tower foundation and materials could be used for a shorter building at position B. Visitors centers could be anywhere on the site, particularly position C. Some security and administration offices could be located at position D since delivery vehicles would enter the south side of the site. Suggestions are welcome for possible construction at positions A, B, C, and D. WTC 1 could be shifted 20 feet (6.1 m) east. Modifications to the No. 1 subway crossing the site would not cause service interruption.

[Jeannette Latoria]

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] However, with the construction for the Freedom Tower being delayed and how low support is dropping, there is a possibility that the Twin Towers II may have to be built, regardless of how tragic it might be, but it will be confirmed soon what will officially happen.