Vision for rebuilding New York's WTC site unveiled

NEW YORK, Sep 7 (Reuters) Three celebrity architects today unveiled designs for three new skyscrapers at the site destroyed by the September 11 attacks, giving the world its first comprehensive look at how the rebuilt World Trade Center will look.

Britain's Norman Foster and Richard Rogers and Japan's Fumihiko Maki each designed one of buildings that will swirl around a memorial where the Twin Towers once stood. Construction is due for completion in 2012.

At heights of 1,350 feet, 1,255 feet and 946 feet, they will be among the tallest buildings in New York. But they will be eclipsed by the neighboring 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, whose final design by American David Childs was revealed earlier this year.

Foster's building may be the most eye-catching, appearing to be a cluster of four slender towers, each with diamond-shaped tops tilted at an angle.

Rogers's tower is distinguished by diagonal exterior supports and topped by four functional antennae, one at each corner of the roof.

Maki's building, though the shortest, most evokes the old Twin Towers through its look and feel in a nod to their architect, Minoru Yamasaki.

Their architectural teams collaborated so that the designs, while distinct, would be harmonious.

All three will have several levels of retail space just above and below ground level in bid to revitalize lower Manhattan. The Foster and Rogers buildings also feature massive trading floors to lure large financial tenants.

The buildings conform to a general master plan by Daniel Libeskind, who envisioned four skyscrapers of descending heights swirling around the memorial, which will be marked by a pair of waterfalls dropping into below-ground reflecting pools on the footprints of the original Twin Towers.

A total of 2,759 people died in the hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center.

All of the new skyscrapers will have floor-to-ceiling glass walls offering spectacular vistas. In a selling point to corporate executives seeking status-building corner offices, all of the towers have columns that are recessed from the corners, providing unimpeded views.

That feature came on the orders of Larry Silverstein, the developer who signed a 99-year lease on the World Trade Center site six weeks before it was destroyed on September 11, 2001. A Silverstein spokesman said there is not yet a cost estimate for the rebuilding project.

After protracted disputes over insurance, design, security, financing and control over the site, construction on the Freedom Tower finally began in April.

Libeskind provided an ambitious design for the Freedom Tower that police and security experts later determined was too risky for a building that is presumed to be a desirable target for a future attack.

Silverstein then chose Childs to redraw the Freedom Tower, whose main structure will have a similar height and profile that each of the Twin Towers had, but with a taller and more pronounced antenna.

The developer also asked Childs to design the three other skyscrapers, but Childs said he believed those jobs should be offered to others, leading to the selection of Foster, Rogers and Maki.

REUTERS KD KP2128