It has recently emerged that the final Libeskind scheme for the WTC reconstruction, released late in February, was much larger than the design first selected.   Rebuild Downtown Our Town (R.Dot), a local pressure group, claimed that the Libeskind scheme chosen had been greatly enlarged to match the floor area lost on 11 September.   "There should be a huge public outcry about this shift back into gigantism," noted Susan S. Szenasy, co-chair of R.Dot and editor of Metropolis Magazine.   Those who have been following the process will recall that the first round of six schemes were heavily criticised for their gigantism.

The Lower Manhattan Devepment Corporation chose the scheme by Studio Daniel Libeskind from the short list of two announced early in February.   Following what is possibly the most intensive session of public relations and lobbying ever seen amongst architects, the Think team's open framed twin towers scheme was set aside in favour of a much-modified version of the concept oroginally proposed by Libeskind.

There's a good presentation of the selected scheme on the New York Times website.

The proposal was chosen from schemes submitted by six Modernist architectural firms selected from a group invited to make proposals late last year, after the cool reception for the earlier six concept plans.   The earlier plans for the WTC area were developed by a variety of architectural firms including renowned skyscraper architects Skidmore Owings and Merrill, Peterson - Littenberg and Cooper Robertson & Partners, have been refined by architects Beyer Blinder Belle in conjunction with transport planners Parsons Brinckerhof.

Other criticisms have come from those who had hoped to see a restoration of the broken street grid disrupted by the original WTC super block.   The Libeskind proposal replaces only Greenwich Street, the north-south link, leaving the east-west links of Cortlandt, Dey and Fulton streets broken.   Of these the latter is introduced as a 'pedestrian walkway' running through two large undefined green spaces.   A large open space designated as a 'Memorial Park' is sunk 10 metres (30 feet) below ground level and overhung by several buildings. It is difficult to imagine either this cavernous space or the several pedestrian walkways becoming the lively 24/7 pedestrian environment called for by community groups.   Similarly, the proposal to put a deck over West Street will permanently foil attempts to transform that thoroughfare from a traffic sewer to a gracious boulevard.

In the end it is admitted by most involved that the scheme is most unlikely to be built in the form proposed.   The current economic climate has dampened demand for new office space, and it seems unlikely that the buildings will be built in the form shown, at some unknown future date.

The World Trade Centre replacement always threatened to become an unseemly feeding frenzy for Modernist architects aiming to memorialise themselves rather than the 3,000-odd killed on 11 September 2001.   For a whil it seemed that a more humane outcome was possible, one involving public consultation in the design process and an appreciation that good urbanism depends more on a maximisation of connections and pedestrian street life than monumental buildings.   Unfortunately it seems that these high hopes have been defeated -for the time being - by the dinosaurs of Modernist megastructure.   It seems ironic that community groups such as R.Dot that are calling for elements such as a green market and public housing in the rebuilt Lower Manhattan have enthusiastically embraced the Libeskind approach with its big architecture and homogenous cityscape.   There seems to be an elemental misfit between community formation and grand architectural display which has not yet been confronted by community groups.