Celebrated international architects have presented new designs for rebuilding the site of New York's World Trade Centre, including four proposals for the world's tallest structure.
The nine different visions are similar in that they all have a mass transit hub, retail and commercial space, museums and cultural institutions, a tree-lined boulevard and gardens and memorials to the 2,800 victims of the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks that toppled the twin towers.
"The plans are innovative and varied," said Louis Tomson, president of the New York agency overseeing the planning. "It's no accident that every plan attempts to reclaim our skyline as a powerful symbol, that every plan respects the footprints (of the twin towers) as memorials and as cultural space."
The unveiling of the concepts at the World Financial Centre's Winter Garden across the street from the 16-acre (6.475 hectare) hole where the towers once stood, was the second time in five months that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation offered potential designs for public discussion.
In July, six concepts for the site were rejected by the public as dull and uninspiring.
The corporation went back to the drawing board and in September selected some of the world's best known architects to come up with new concepts. They included Norman Foster's Foster and Partners of London, which designed the new German parliament in Berlin, Studio Daniel Libeskind of Berlin, designers of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and the Getty Museum architect, American Richard Meier.
Models of the new plans will be on public display in the Winter Garden from December 20 through February 3. Conventions for the public to give their opinions are scheduled for January 13 and January14 and the designs can also be seen on web sites http://www.LowerManhattan.info and http://www.RenewNYC.com.