The NY Sun takes a look at the city's skybridges, and their place in our future. While some cities offer the plenty of the structures to their residents (Minneapolis, we're looking at you), they are often only found in parts of the country with extreme hot or cold temperatures. Do our humid summers and frigid winters warrant more indoor walkways? Apparently we're getting less! A few existing skybridges are now in danger of being torn......

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried......

As the architect Rafael Viñoly sees it, the Freedom Tower is utterly superfluous. This was the concluding thought of his public presentation on January 18, this year's first Third Thursday lecture sponsored by the Downtown Alliance. Rounding out his half-stoic, half-bitter account of the past five years' WTC design proceedings, he plugged the new book, Think New York: A Ground Zero Diary, which chronicles these affairs from the point of view of the novel......

The unveiling of the new buildings - Towers 2, 3, 4 - that will accompany the Freedom Tower at the redeveloped World Trade Center was met with excitement yesterday, proving there's nothing that beautiful computer renderings, a who's who of architects, and a healthy dose of optimism can't do. The NY Times updated its article about the announcement yesterday and also has an article about the pink elephant in the room: How slow progress......

We're up to Version 3.0: Architect David Childs revealed new designs for Freedom Tower, the centerpiece of the World Trade Center's redevelopment. The NY Times reports that the biggest change to the design is encasing the "187-foot-high, bomb-resistant concrete base in a screen of glass prisms rather than metal panels." When Childs revealed a redesign last year, one with a concrete base, people derided it for being like a "concrete bunker," albeit it one that......

If there's something politicians know how to do, it's to convene a committee! The NY Times focuses on how everyone wants new plans to bring the WTC Memorial budget down - there's that much agreement. But the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has one committee working on it...and Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg created another committee to work on ideas! Double the thinking, infinite times the resentment! The LMDC team includes the builder Bovis, whose......

If you want to be thoroughly depressed by the rebuilding process at Ground Zero in a matter of pages, versus a matter of years, Gothamist highly recommends reading New York magazine's cover story about the WTC Memorial and its architect, Michael Arad. It's an exclusive interview where Arad spill his guts about the process, but also gets worked over as one of the many egos in cast of a million egos and billion interests.......

It'll be an alley of cray architectural all-stars downtown! After turning over Freedom Tower reins to the Port Authority and getting a pretty sweet deal, given everything, developer Larry Silverstein has annointed British architect (and Sir) Richard Rogers to design Tower 3 and Japanese Pritzker-winner Fumihiko Maki to design Tower 4 at the World Trade Center. Rogers is making a splash in New York lately - he'll be designing the Javits Center expansion, the......

If you've ever wondered how the highest profile skyscraper in the world was redesigned, wonder no more: The NY Times published a look at how architects cranked out the new design, with political officials peering over one shoulder, an anxious developer at the other, and the expectations of the NYPD looming. Besides enjoying the fact that Skidmore Owings & Merrill architects would turn to Lombardi's for their pizza runs ("three meals in a row, straight......

The supposedly safer Freedom Tower designs will be unveiled today, and it's more streamlined. And maybe more boring - but any hopes of something interesting went away when Larry Silverstein got more involved with the design. The NY Times writes that the tower's "height and proportion, centered antenna and cut-away corners, tall lobbies and pinstripe facade [evokes] - both deliberately and coincidentally - the sky-piercing twins it is meant to replace." The tower, designed by......

There's a very cool article in the NY Times about the "kinetic, interactive stainless-steel wall" being designed for 7 World Trade Center. Because the base of 7 WTC is a Con Ed substation, architect David Childs is sheathing it in glass, and has worked with James Carpenter Design Associates to design a sort of sculptural installation: There are panels of prisms that will cause pedestrian's reflections to move along the wall. Gothamist loves the idea......

Forget Saddam in his underwear (people, this is like seeing your uncle absent-mindedly walk around the house without his pants, only if your uncle is a murderer and despot), the truly awesome photograph that the NY Post has today is this shot of Governor Pataki and polarizing international architect Daniel Libeskind getting cozy. Photographer Josh Williams captured the moment, to which the Post writes, "What will Libby Pataki and Nina Libeskind say when they see......

This is what Donald Trump's proposed World Trade Center design looks like: Pretty much like the old one. The Daily News points out that Trump's model was on MSNBC last week, and that engineer Ken Gardner and architect Harry Belton's model and plans can be seen at MakeNYNYAgain.com. No joke, Trump is serious about hating Freedom Tower. Gardner is a Trump crony from plnning his tower in Chicago. Gothamist is reeling from this Trump chestnut:......

Now that it's official that the Freedom Tower design will be redone due to security concerns, it turns out that maybe the Port Authority knew about the NYPD's concerns last year. The Daily News reports that Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism, Michael Sheehan, expressed the department's concerns in letters sent in August and October of 2004. While there's no official statement from the Port Authority, some PA sources say that one letter may have never reached......

NY1 reports that the WTC Memorial, Reflecting Absence, has been tested by a fountain consultant. The consultant constructed a "full-scale mock-up of some fountain configurations" to look for "potential problems with freezing and winter conditions"; the design has two pools in the footprints of the old World Trade Center Towers, with waterfalls around them. Outgoing Lower Manhattan Development Corportation President Kevin Rampe says that memorial groundbreaking is still "on track" for 2006, even in spite......

Just about a year and a half after a final design had been revealed, Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg and even developer Larry Silverstein have agreed Freedom Tower needs a design to address safety and security concerns. The past week had been filled with the NYPD's very public unhappiness with the current design and its "unsafeness", citing things like the building being too close to the street. This could delay construction for at least another year......

A former Yale architecture student is suing architect David Childs and architecture firm Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, claiming they stole his design and used it for Freedom Tower at the WTC site. Thomas Shine and his lawyer say that in 1999, Shine's design for "Olympic Tower" was evaluated in Yale class by Childs who said of the twisted tower and exterior grid, "It is a very beautiful shape. You took the skin and developed it......

The Village Voice's Jeff Byles writes essay about Daniel Libeskind's new memoir, Breaking Ground, which includes Libeskind's reaction to the sour reaction to his Freedom Tower design. While Byles wishes that Libeskind could be allow to "be Libeskind" (full of imagination, not corn), Gothamist was mesmerized by Libeskind's fascination with the film, The Shining. Here's what was excerpted from the memoir:Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall up in that giant, fading resort in the Rockies. People......

Tonight at 9PM, PBS (Channel 13) will air the Frontline documentary, sacred ground, by Nick Rosen and Kevin Sim about the wrangling to develop a tower for the redesigned World Trade Center. At the heart of the documentary are Daniel Libeskind, the chosen master planner of the whole site, and David Childs, the architect brought on to steer the design of the Freedom Tower. Gothamist will be watching, because we've been following the redesign drama......

Four lesser known cultural institutions were selected to be populate of the redesigned WTC area. Curbed reports:Delivering a slap to the City Opera, WTC redevelopment officials have selected four arts groups to be housed at the site: the Signature Theater Company, the Joyce Theater, the Drawing Center and the Freedom Center. Signature (drama) and Joyce (dance) will share a performance arts building, while Drawing (uh, drawing) and Freedom will cozy up in a cultural building.Gothamist......

How unlikely is it that after the public fuss of choosing a new building and complex for the WTC site and a WTC memorial, the Port Authority now seems like the smartest city agency for simply choosing a brilliant designer to design the new transit hub? Daniel Libeskind seems like a tyrant, David Childs is Silverstein's man, the LMDC seems hopelessly caught between a number of constituents. Whereas Santiago Calatrava swoops in and proposes......

To the dismay of those who enjoy a throwdown between architects, it seems like WTC redesign master planner Daniel Libeskindwon't be locked in a battle of the wills with architect Santiago Calatrava who is designing the new PATH station at the WTC site. Libeskind reportedly "loves" the changes Calatrava's has had to make to Libeskind's "Wedge of Light," even though Libeskind's wife/watchdog Nina initially objected. Blah blah, Calatrava's designs don't fundamentally change the Wedge concept.......

The new design for Freedom Tower of the redesigned WTC site was unveiled today. The tower, the product of compromises between architects Daniel Libeskind and David Childs, will be the tallest building in the world with its spire and antennae reaching 1,776 feet. Governor Pataki, during the unveiling of the tower on the Today show, said, "This represents a melding of two very, very talented creative geniuses." Childs said he and Libeskind "a spectacular time......

In time for Governor George Pataki's deadline, WTC master planner Daniel Libeskind and WTC tower architect David Childs have come to a compromise in the design of the WTC tower: The tower will both have an assymetrical spire (Libeskind) AND a wind farm (Childs), "1,500 feet tall — 1,100 feet enclosed and 400 feet open — with a 276-foot spire to claim the symbolic height, and an antenna reaching beyond that, perhaps to 2,000......

The infighting between WTC redesign master planner Daniel Libeskind and tower architect David Childs get nuttier: Apparently, there was some sort of break–in at Childs' offices (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill), and Childs' team thinks it was perpetrated by Libeskind staffers. Former police commissioner Howard Safir is investigating, and the Post reports a source as saying, "[Childs' team] wanted to know what happened. They were very angry and they wanted to see what was behind......

The Times reveals that the main building of the redesigned WTC will vastly different from Daniel Libeskind's design. The new design, from tower architect David Childs and engineer Guy Nordensen, will be revealed next week by Governor George Pataki. Times reporter David Dunlap's description: Those who have seen the design of the Freedom Tower, as Mr. Pataki calls it, describe a torqued and tapering form culminating in an unoccupied, open-air structure filled with cables, trusses,......

The NY Post reports that Daniel Libeskind's "win" to design the WTC site came as a result of a name–calling contest, architecture–style. And partly because of the Post. One of Libeskind's partners, Gary Hack, said that when the two final WTC redesign plans were announced, the Post and other papers referred to the Libeskind design as "The Pit." So Libeskind and and his crew referred to rival THINK plan as "The Skeleton," which Hack later......

The finalists for the WTC Memorial competition will be announced today at 10:30AM. Families of September 11 victims viewed the finalists privately last night; one said, "I'm emotionally overwhelmed by what I've seen. The ideas are incredible." Some design elements, as reported by the Post and Daily News: * Some designs put big portions of the Ground Zero pit at street level. * Proposals vary for displaying victims' names - grouping them by age, by......

The Post reports that WTC developer Larry Silverstein is trying to get his chosen architect, David Childs, to continute to work with WTC redesign architect Daniel Libeskind, in order to reach a plan of some sort, after the widely publicized uneasy stalemate in the decision process. The Post calls it's "making peace," we call it his only option as Governor Pataki is breathing down their necks to get the project started. Gothamist thinks that Silverstein......

When it was announced that David Childs would be designing the Freedom Tower part of the WTC, with Daniel Libeskind remaining as visionary for the project as a whole, many wondered if this interesting but magnet for ego-colliding collaboration would work. Three months later, some tensions over the design have emerged. As Childs' and Liebeskind's visions differ, Times reporter David Dunlap writes, "Without an agreed-upon aesthetic approach, there can be no detailed drawings. Without......