Analysis

While the presence of the World Trade Center complex established the site as the major presence on the skyline and the node for Lower Manhattan, it also created significant urban problems and failed to address some existing ones. The complex offered little functional diversity, which further reinforced its isolation from the surrounding urban fabric and from Battery Park City in particular. In addition to ignoring the opportunity to integrate public transportation systems, it fostered the creation of a major on-grade highway, optimistically renamed West Street after the failure of the Westway proposal. The buildings themselves, although a remarkable engineering feat, were not distinguished architecturally or urbanistically. Site Issues Discussion

Proposal

Our project proposes to address these urban issues in the following ways:

• Increase the population density and consolidate commuter traffic by creating a major train station linking existing subway and PATH lines to new Metro North and LIRR terminals within the same complex. Link the Station to above-ground transportation (ferries, taxis and busses).
• Facilitate pedestrian traffic through the site and re-introduce skyline view corridors along both north-south and east-west axes without re-establishing the street grid which would promote automobile and truck traffic.
• Depress express lanes of the West Side highway below grade. Reinforce the east-west pedestrian link to the World Financial Center, Battery Park City and Hudson River.
• Extend Greenwich Street south to Vesey Street and create a park at the intersection of Greenwich, Vesey and West Broadway.
• Establish a relationship between the new buildings and the scale of the existing urban fabric by breaking down the apparent mass of the new complex.
• Create open space around and establish visual links in diagonal directions by grouping the mass of new buildings in the center of the site.