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Donald Trump offers to rebuild World Trade Center twin towers
New York property tycoon Donald Trump unveiled his design for "bigger, stronger and better" twin towers to replace the World Trade Center originals destroyed on September 11, 2001.
Denouncing the existing plans for rebuilding Ground Zero as the "worst pile of crap architecture I've ever seen," Trump argued that erecting two new, even taller twin towers was the only valid response to the terrorists.
The consummate self-promoter, known as "The Donald," showed off his proposal just weeks after the official master design was put on hold because of security concerns surrounding the centerpiece 1,776 foot Freedom Tower.
Describing the Freedom Tower as an "empty skeleton," Trump said its construction would be a capitulation.
"If we rebuild the World Trade Center in the form of a skeleton ... the terrorists win. It's that bad," he told reporters gathered in the lobby of his Fifth Avenue Trump Towers headquarters in Manhattan.
The design put forward by Trump and his structural engineer Kenneth Gardner, essentially offers a modified version of the original twin towers, erected in the early 1970s.
The replacements would be at least 1,475-feet (449.6 m) tall, more than 100 feet (30.1 m) higher than their previous incarnations. The new North Tower would also boast a 383-foot (116.7 m) communications mast.
"It's bigger, it's stronger and it's better than the previous World Trade Center, and it sets the right tone and the right attitude," Trump said, adding that some members of the public who had seen the model had been moved to tears.
Charles Wolf, whose wife was killed in the North Tower, was more circumspect in his appraisal of the model.
"It spooked me when I first saw it ... the idea of the towers rising again," Wolf said.
"I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it's an interesting idea," he added.
The Trump-backed towers -- he promised not to attach his name to the buildings -- would employ a tube-within-a-tube design with improved fireproofing and larger stairwells.
Gardner said the structures would be able to withstand the kind of attacks that brought down the original towers on September 11, 2001 killing 2,479 people.
Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind, branded an "egghead" by Trump over the design of the Freedom Tower, fired off a letter to the property tycoon this week, pointing out that he was not responsible for the building's problems.
The Polish-born architect stressed that the footprint and twisting shape of the tower were the work of David Childs, who was hired by Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein to modify Libeskind's vision.
"I am sure that all of us, whatever the shape of our head or its decorative accessory agree that security is the paramount concern for the new tower," Libeskind wrote in a thinly-veiled dig at Trump's distinctive hairstyle.
In a report published in April, the New York Police Department voiced concerns that the planned location of the Freedom Tower was too close to Manhattan's Westside Highway.
A subsequent meeting between New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor George Pataki and police officials concluded that a new design was required.
"They should throw it all away," was Trump's assessment of the design rethink.
"This is what people want," he said of his own proposal. "It's a better memorial. It's a greater building. This is what the World Trade Center was."
The Freedom Tower was originally scheduled to be topped out at the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009.
The design of the tower, and indeed that of the entire Ground Zero redevelopment project, has been the source of bitter dispute -- between the architects involved and also the often competing interests of the victims' families, the developers and the politicians.
The tensions have arisen from the different priorities attached to the project, with some seeing a site of remembrance, others a future place of work and still more a symbol of rebirth.
New York property tycoon Donald Trump unveiled his design for "bigger, stronger and better" twin towers to replace the World Trade Center originals destroyed on September 11, 2001.
Denouncing the existing plans for rebuilding Ground Zero as the "worst pile of crap architecture I've ever seen," Trump argued that erecting two new, even taller twin towers was the only valid response to the terrorists.
The consummate self-promoter, known as "The Donald," showed off his proposal just weeks after the official master design was put on hold because of security concerns surrounding the centerpiece 1,776 foot Freedom Tower.
Describing the Freedom Tower as an "empty skeleton," Trump said its construction would be a capitulation.
"If we rebuild the World Trade Center in the form of a skeleton ... the terrorists win. It's that bad," he told reporters gathered in the lobby of his Fifth Avenue Trump Towers headquarters in Manhattan.
The design put forward by Trump and his structural engineer Kenneth Gardner, essentially offers a modified version of the original twin towers, erected in the early 1970s.
The replacements would be at least 1,475-feet (449.6 m) tall, more than 100 feet (30.1 m) higher than their previous incarnations. The new North Tower would also boast a 383-foot (116.7 m) communications mast.
"It's bigger, it's stronger and it's better than the previous World Trade Center, and it sets the right tone and the right attitude," Trump said, adding that some members of the public who had seen the model had been moved to tears.
Charles Wolf, whose wife was killed in the North Tower, was more circumspect in his appraisal of the model.
"It spooked me when I first saw it ... the idea of the towers rising again," Wolf said.
"I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it's an interesting idea," he added.
The Trump-backed towers -- he promised not to attach his name to the buildings -- would employ a tube-within-a-tube design with improved fireproofing and larger stairwells.
Gardner said the structures would be able to withstand the kind of attacks that brought down the original towers on September 11, 2001 killing 2,479 people.
Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind, branded an "egghead" by Trump over the design of the Freedom Tower, fired off a letter to the property tycoon this week, pointing out that he was not responsible for the building's problems.
The Polish-born architect stressed that the footprint and twisting shape of the tower were the work of David Childs, who was hired by Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein to modify Libeskind's vision.
"I am sure that all of us, whatever the shape of our head or its decorative accessory agree that security is the paramount concern for the new tower," Libeskind wrote in a thinly-veiled dig at Trump's distinctive hairstyle.
In a report published in April, the New York Police Department voiced concerns that the planned location of the Freedom Tower was too close to Manhattan's Westside Highway.
A subsequent meeting between New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor George Pataki and police officials concluded that a new design was required.
"They should throw it all away," was Trump's assessment of the design rethink.
"This is what people want," he said of his own proposal. "It's a better memorial. It's a greater building. This is what the World Trade Center was."
The Freedom Tower was originally scheduled to be topped out at the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009.
The design of the tower, and indeed that of the entire Ground Zero redevelopment project, has been the source of bitter dispute -- between the architects involved and also the often competing interests of the victims' families, the developers and the politicians.
The tensions have arisen from the different priorities attached to the project, with some seeing a site of remembrance, others a future place of work and still more a symbol of rebirth.
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