WTC Transit Hub - by Santiago Calatrava

**RedFerrari360f1** · January 21st, 2004, 05:05 PM

The second picture JMGarcia posted of that tower looks awesome.

**ZippyTheChimp** · January 21st, 2004, 09:53 PM

NY Newsday

Open-air Design For WTC Transit Hub

By The Associated Press

January 21, 2004, 5:46 PM EST

The design for a transit hub that would link ferries, commuter trains and 14 subway lines to the World Trade Center site will shine natural light 60 feet underground, move people on mechanical walkways and make some connection to the 2001 terrorist attacks, officials familiar with the design said.

Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava was to present final drawings Thursday for the $2 billion transit station that New York and New Jersey officials say will be comparable to city landmarks like Grand Central Terminal.

Calatrava, who has designed buildings around the world including the stadium for the Athens Olympics this summer, is adding his design to several visions introduced in recent weeks for the 16-acre site.

Architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind last month presented models of the Freedom Tower that would replace the trade center, and designers Michael Arad and Peter Walker last week offered drawings of a ground zero memorial.

Calatrava has had to receive Libeskind's approval for a design that would mesh with the architect's master plan for the site, and is working with New York's STV Group and DMJM & Harris to design a new station to replace the one destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.

According to preliminary documents filed with the Federal Transit Administration, the station would still be called the World Trade Center Transportation hub.

A temporary terminal opened in November, and is now taking more than 24,000 daily riders between New Jersey and downtown and midtown Manhattan, said Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Greg Trevor.

The station had served 67,000 daily passengers before the attacks; the agency said the permanent hub should begin operating in 2006 and could handle more than 80,000 passengers by 2020.

Calatrava's design will feature a huge, glass-and-steel entrance and will let daylight shine down 60 feet below ground to its four train platforms, according to the Port Authority, which is in charge of the rebuilding.

It will have a huge open plaza, several shops and restaurants and mechanical walkways that connect passengers to ferry service at the World Financial Center and other walkways that link the terminal to 14 downtown subway lines.

The design will also restore a mass transit network in lower Manhattan "in a manner that recognizes the horror and heroism of Sept. 11, 2001," said Trevor. He did not elaborate, but said besides improving downtown mass transit, "the World Trade Center transportation hub must be an architectural icon that will inspire generations to come."

Construction could begin on the new hub by the end of the year, and it should be finished in 2009, the same year the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower is scheduled for completion.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

**RedFerrari360f1** · January 21st, 2004, 10:07 PM

Open air?? Couldnt that pose a problem come the chilly months?? Other than that Im extremely excited to see this plan.

**Kris** · January 21st, 2004, 11:02 PM

January 22, 2004

Design for Trade Center PATH Terminal to Be Unveiled

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Two counterpoised glass wings - bent as if to offer shelter, soaring as if to offer hope, as long as a city block and capable of movement on their own - will crown the permanent World Trade Center PATH terminal designed by Santiago Calatrava.

The design of the terminal, which will sit astride a network of passageways linking commuter trains, ferry boats, 14 subway lines and perhaps even an AirTrain station, is to be unveiled this morning by Gov. George E. Pataki, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which will build the $2 billion project.

Though the PATH terminal is the third key element of the trade center redevelopment project - in many ways, quite literally its heart - the design will almost burst on the civic consciousness, since work has proceeded quietly, with none of the discordant prelude that accompanied Freedom Tower and the memorial, "Reflecting Absence."

And quiet was still the order of the day yesterday, when the Port Authority permitted only a brief interview with the architect, one that could not touch on specifics.

"On the scale of the next 30, 40 years, generosity of planning is essential," said Mr. Calatrava, who is widely regarded as the world's leading designer of lyrical transportation structures. His partners in the PATH project are the STV Group and DMJM & Harris.

To hear the terminal described by those who have seen it, the Port Authority embraced the idea of creating a generous space. Indeed, the project may be criticized for extravagance, since there is a functioning $323 million temporary PATH station.

In the permanent station, which might begin serving passengers in 2006 and be completed by 2009, the most striking element above ground would be curving, winglike canopies. They would run the length of the oblong glass-and-steel shell that is to serve as an enormous skylight over the terminal concourse. They would also extend over the plazas created to the northeast and southwest of the terminal building.

At the apogee of their arcs, the wings would rise more than 100 feet into the air. Given the size of the block - bounded by Church Street and the re-established Fulton, Greenwich and Dey Streets - they would apparently be more than 350 feet long.

Even more striking, said those who have been shown the proposal, the wings could pivot aside to create an opening to the sky along the main axis of the terminal. This would allow the concourse to be ventilated naturally; a pleasant amenity on a spring day, a necessity in case of fire.

This slow-motion but kinetic architectural gesture unmistakably bears the Calatrava signature. A canopy at his Valencia Science Center in Spain, for example, opens and closes like an eyelid. The roof of the Kuwait Pavilion for the 1992 World's Fair in Seville was composed of fingerlike segments that could be opened to expose it to the sky.

The bold, sweeping curves of the PATH terminal canopies bring to mind several of Mr. Calatrava's recent projects, like the Milwaukee Art Museum expansion and the opera house at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands. But they might also remind some viewers of Jorn Utzon's Sydney Opera House or Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center at Kennedy International Airport or the glass wall planned by David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill as part of the proposed expansion of Pennsylvania Station.

Mr. Calatrava has made it plain since last fall that he views the terminal as far more than a commuter rail station. "It is like the heart to the body," he said yesterday, "pulsing people in and out."

And some hint of the airy design to be unveiled today could be gleaned from Mr. Calatrava's statement that "we are building with light."

Certainly, there is a premium to be paid for architecture of this quality, which the Port Authority acknowledged without ascribing a specific cost.

"I just don't think you can say because we've hired Calatrava, it's going to cost 15 to 20 percent more," said Joseph J. Seymour, executive director of the Port Authority. "We want to create for downtown a grand point of entry, a place that's not only a transportation hub but also a great piece of architecture, because that also defines an area."

"Great cities really demand great public spaces," Mr. Seymour said.

The above-ground PATH terminal structure would occupy part of the area set aside for the Wedge of Light plaza in the master plan for the site by Studio Daniel Libeskind. The lines of the wedge, Mr. Libeskind has explained, are defined by the angle of the sun at 8:46 a.m. and 10:28 a.m. on Sept. 11: the beginning of the 2001 attack and the collapse of the second tower.

These angles have apparently been preserved and incorporated into Mr. Calatrava's design, which sits obliquely on the block. Mr. Calatrava said yesterday that he found the Wedge of Light a "beautiful idea" and one of the strongest symbolic features of the plan.

"I am working fully with the master plan," Mr. Calatrava said, "and using it as inspiration."

For his part, Mr. Libeskind, who has fought on several other fronts to protect his overall concept, said yesterday that Mr. Calatrava had embraced and improved the plan.

"I was very moved when he showed me the direction for the station," Mr. Libeskind said, "which not only is reinforcing the Wedge of Light but creating something wonderful as a civic building."

"He understood the musical quality of the whole plan," Mr. Libeskind said.

Mr. Calatrava, too, used musical terms to describe the place of the terminal within an ascending spiral of office skyscrapers that reaches its peak at Freedom Tower. The terminal will sit between a 62-story building and a 65-story building.

Rather than compete with a crescendo, Mr. Calatrava said, he envisioned the terminal as a pause. "Part of the music that is very important is the silent moment," he said. "El silencio es también música."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

**Gulcrapek** · January 21st, 2004, 11:06 PM

My stomach is shaking. I can't wait to get to the school library tomorrow...

**LuPeRcALiO** · January 21st, 2004, 11:37 PM

those wings sound a little like the Liège TGV Station in Belgium

**fioco** · January 21st, 2004, 11:43 PM

I'll sleep with fingers crossed tonight. Calatrava's transit center may prove to be the evocative sculptural centerpiece that people had hoped the memorial to be -- and Calatrava is certainly capable of evoking such powerful metaphors.

The "silence is also music" metaphor borrows a motif from Reflecting Absence. The types of silences in music are just as varied as the musical notes. This "pause" hopes to soar and dance with the light. Its location adjacent to the memorial will bring poetry above ground level and bring a fuller statement to the memorial site.

In my wildest dreams I hope that these developments will have a resultant effect upon the design of the Freedom Tower. It has great aspirations but it hasn't found the poetry yet to attain them.

**Lemonsoda** · January 22nd, 2004, 07:49 AM

Originally Posted by fioco

In my wildest dreams I hope that these developments will have a resultant effect upon the design of the Freedom Tower. It has great aspirations but it hasn't found the poetry yet to attain them.

That particular dreamscape includes me.

And I wish Santiago Calatrava could design the toothpick on top of the Freedom Tower. In my opinion, that might frame such a setting of sorrow and hope appropriately.

**NYguy** · January 22nd, 2004, 08:50 AM

Sounds very exciting...

Though the PATH terminal is the third key element of the trade center redevelopment project, the design will almost burst on the civic consciousness, since work has proceeded quietly, with none of the discordant prelude that accompanied Freedom Tower and the memorial, "Reflecting Absence."

"On the scale of the next 30, 40 years, generosity of planning is essential," said Mr. Calatrava, who is widely regarded as the world's leading designer of lyrical transportation structures. His partners in the PATH project are the STV Group and DMJM & Harris.

To hear the terminal described by those who have seen it, the Port Authority embraced the idea of creating a generous space..........

the most striking element above ground would be curving, winglike canopies. They would run the length of the oblong glass-and-steel shell that is to serve as an enormous skylight over the terminal concourse. They would also extend over the plazas created to the northeast and southwest of the terminal building.

At the apogee of their arcs, the wings would rise more than 100 feet into the air. Given the size of the block - bounded by Church Street and the re-established Fulton, Greenwich and Dey Streets - they would apparently be more than 350 feet long.

Even more striking, said those who have been shown the proposal, the wings could pivot aside to create an opening to the sky along the main axis of the terminal. This would allow the concourse to be ventilated naturally; a pleasant amenity on a spring day, a necessity in case of fire.

**NYguy** · January 22nd, 2004, 09:53 AM

Not the best rendering, but an early scan from the Star Ledger...

**TonyO** · January 22nd, 2004, 10:08 AM

wow.

**Jasonik** · January 22nd, 2004, 11:05 AM

In the Belly of the Beast, or a Venus Flytrap. :wink:

Dramatic :!:

**STT757** · January 22nd, 2004, 11:43 AM

Open air?? Couldnt that pose a problem come the chilly months??

From what I've read it will be able to be opened and closed, a retractable roof similar to modern baseball stadiums.

It would serve several purposes..

First it could vent smoke and gases quickly in the event of a fire or other such events.

It would be a way to cool the lower platforms in the Summer without the need for air conditioning, if you have ever stood for five minutes on a Subway platform when it's 90 degrees out you will appreciate having a breeze.