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Once inside, it was difficult to see or move as NBC news anchors and journalism students alike interviewed everyone from big-name architects to guests off the street. Although actual plans for a new building remain far off, and even the process for planning it remains unclear, the throng was a tribute to how much New Yorkers want to envision the city's future and to exchange ideas about what the site should represent.

Design Proposals for the Site

The show itself came together quickly. About eight weeks after the September 11 tragedy, gallery owner Max Protetch, curator Aaron Betsky, and the staffs of Architectural Record and Architecture magazines invited 120 architects to submit proposals. The participants had a month to come up with ideas, which they prepared for free. Sixty of them sent models, digital renderings, sketches, and, in some cases, poems.

Among the many images that were formally fascinating was Stephen Holl's "Floating Memorial/Folded Street." Holl proposed that a large square ramp ascend in diagonals around the site of an absence. The memorial would climb from the water, creating a folded street that rises over the site.

Inside, the densely folded street would hold many offices, cafes, and observation decks. Below, the footprints of former buildings would be made into reflecting pools. The square volumes, though sloped, would echo the masses of towers as they climbed a slow progression to achieve a soaring height, opening in full view of the city and river.

The diversity of exhibits was dazzling. Eytan Kaufman proposed building a bridge to New Jersey, an arched pedestrian building that would house office space, pedestrian walkways, and a park. Paolo Soleri offered a secular cathedral, a place to meditate on the long history of theological terrorism. Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, noted for his humane, lightweight disaster relief structures, proposed a graceful, temporary paper temple in which to pray.

Other architects said the site should be used to house a mix of cultural uses, new branches of city universities, cafes, restaurants, and museums. Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture proposed buildings to create "experiences to inspire a thoughtful and hopeful life."

Samuel Mockbee, who worked on the project in bed, just days before his death in late December, proposed two towers to rise higher than the originals, but with a reflecting pool 911 feet deep in the center.

Other designers called for a building that would somehow express humanity. Marwan Al-Sayed wrote," Looking back at the historical evolution of the skyscraper, I determined that perhaps its future might reside not so much in its formal, structural, or technical pyrotechnics, as much as it might reside in its capacity to become a kind of emotional vessel."

Al-Sayed proposed that the building's skin become a kind of transmissive material, whose surface would seem to respond to outside environments. Kruek and Sexton similarly suggested a new building with a flexible, responsive skin.

Ways to Consider the Site

Some architects specified little about form but noted that whatever is built should run entirely on sustainable, renewable energy. Others requested that the structure be used to house artists. Still other firms, like Lo/Tek, Preston Scott Cohen, and Fox & Fowle, had their proposals pay tribute to the delicacy and intricacy of the site as it functions within the larger grid of the city.

In the emotional and political climate that surrounds planning decisions for the World Trade Center site, even the selection of invited architects was controversial. Protetch was criticized openly in a public forum for not including more New York-based architects and for opting for celebrities over lesser-known locals.

Yet the outpouring of visitors to the exhibit shows our great desire to find objects and expressions to consider, to find fantasies with which to begin to fill the urban void. And it demonstrates the power of architects to provide these templates for thought.

The exhibit will travel to the National Building Museum, to the Netherlands Architecture Institute, the Vitro Design Museum in Berlin, and the Deutsche Architecture museum in Frankfurt.

Tess Taylor is chapter editor of Oculus, the AIA New York Chapter Newsletter, and a frequent contributor to Metropolis. She lives in Brooklyn.

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Shigeru Ban proposed a temporary paper temple for the World Trade Center site. Image: © Shigeru Ban, courtesy Max Protetch Daniel Libeskind proposed a hanging memorial, living space, work space, and a vertical garden. "The site calls for a whole new understanding of urbanism." Image: © Daniel Libeskind, courtesy Max Protetch Eric Owen Moss proposed "part park, part amphitheater" with "shadows cast in perpetuity from images that no longer exist." Image: © Eric Owen Moss, courtesy Max Protetch Samuel Mockbee sketched two replacement towers, with a 911-foot deep reflecting pool. Image: © Samuel Mockbee, courtesy Max Protetch View up from Mockbee's deep pool. Image: © Samuel Mockbee, courtesy Max Protetch In the memorial proposal by Coop Himmelb(l)au, elements of roundness protrude suggesting a radical transformation and revisioning of the old form. Image: © Coop Himmelb(l)au, courtesy Max Protetch Proposal by Lo/Tek. Image: © Lo/Tek, courtesy Max Protetch Thom Mayne, of Morphosis, proposed "a place where human experience and aesthetic possibility are interwoven." Image: © Morphosis, courtesy Max Protetch   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.