Spurred by grief, hope and pragmatism, architects, artists and others have envisioned myriad new looks for the site of America's greatest devastation. Imagining Ground Zero: Official and Unofficial Proposals for the World Trade Center Site compactly yet vividly documents more than 100 proposals that range from the utilitarian to the Utopian. Drawings and models by world-famous architects (including Tadao Ando, Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaus and Bernard Tschumi) rub shoulders with work by obscure firms. The book opens with a capsule history of the World Trade Center and its neighborhood, a chart showing the various entities that have jurisdiction over the 16-acre site and a description of the design process as of Spring 2004. Proposals of finalists in the official juried competition are represented by clusters of photographs and succinct descriptions. The winning proposal for the memorial (Michael Arad and Peter Walker's "Reflecting Absence") and Daniel Libeskind's winning site plan are allotted more space, with brief summaries of the architects’ various revisions and major critiques by the architectural press. Imagining Ground Zero also offers a sampling of entries to contests sponsored by The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine and Max Protech (an art gallery), as well as submissions received by other outlets, including the professional journal Architectural Record. Included are proposals for the master plan, the memorial and a transportation hub, as well as a few designs intended primarily as political commentaries. Grouped together, the entries' similarities become especially noticeable (for example, towers that entwine or otherwise abut one another). Lucid, attractively designed and copiously illustrated with 252 color photographs, the book offers a concise visual history of the most extensive design competition of our times. However, the lack of an index of participating architects makes Imagining Ground Zero less useful as a reference book. —Cathy Curtis

From Publishers Weekly
With proposals published and debated in the New York Times and elsewhere, the World Trade Center site has generated an unprecedented amount of architectural activity and speculation, beautifully captured in this book from Architectural Record special correspondent Stephens. This 9"×12" compendium presents the five "official" proposals considered by the city and other groups involved in the decision, including a version of the winning design from David Childs, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with collaborating architect Daniel Liebeskind. The illustrations give lots of detail in vibrant color and black-and-white; the text is clear and full of information—and enthusiasm, even for the 120 or so projects that will never be realized. Some of them, like the stunning grid-like project from Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey and Stephen Holl that brilliantly riffs on the original WTC's facade, will be familiar. Others, like Hans Hollein's exact replicas of the original towers—except attached at the top by something that looks like a burned-out overturned car—will be less so. AR editor-in-chief Robert A. Ivy provides a foreword to what is sure to be the architecture book of the season. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
The most highly publicized building renewal process in the world today-and the most significant survey of competing architecture designs since the international design competition for the Chicago Tribune Tower in 1922-is for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. It has inspired a multitude of designs and has engaged architects on a global scale in the re-imagining of the vacant 16-acre site.
Published in conjunction with Architectural Record, the most important architecture journal in the United States, Imagining Ground Zero documents not only the various competitions sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation but also the informal proposals sponsored by the New York Times, New York Magazine, and the exhibition at Max Protetch Gallery, as well as a selection from thousands of schemes submitted independently for the World Trade Center site and Memorial.
Among the key figures in contemporary architecture whose work is featured here are Coop Himmelblau, Peter Eisenman, Norman Foster, Charles Gwathmey, Zaha Hadid, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, Greg Lynn, Richard Meier, Eric Owen Moss, David Rockwell, Lindy Roy, Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, Rafael Viñoly, and many others. With its exhaustive approach to these myriad voices in the discourse surrounding the World Trade Center site, Imagining Ground Zero is destined to become the canonical reference for this unprecedented event in world architecture.


About the Author
Suzanne Stephens is special correspondent for Architectural Record.
Ian Luna is an architectural writer who edited Rizzoli's third volume on Kohn Pedersen Fox and Rizzoli's New New York: Architecture of a City.
Ron Broadhurst is a freelance writer and editor on architecture and design.
Robert A. Ivy is editor-in-chief of Architectural Record.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Imagining Ground Zero: Official and Unofficial Proposals for the World Trade Center Site documents not only the master plan competition, won by Studio Daniel Libeskind and sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, but also proposals submitted by invitation of and published by New York magazine, proposals from the exhibition at Max Protetch Gallery, as well as a selection from the more than 5,000 schemes submitted to the competition for the World Trade Center Memorial. This survey features in depth the official scheme for the site, designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with the collaboration of Daniel Libeskind of Studio Daniel Libeskind; Reflecting Absence, the winning scheme for the memorial, designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker; and, as well, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, designed by Santiago Calatrava, DMJM + Harris, and STV Group.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly