Of course: Because of budget concerns that could be hundreds of millions in overruns, the Port Authority is looking at ways to save money on the World Trade Center transportation hub design. But while the NY Times initially frightens those of you (and us, frankly) who have fallen in love with Santiago Calatrava's design with the words "the Port Authority has begun preparing plans for a more modest alternative," there is this:In no case,......

Five days before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, developer Larry Silverstein released yet another round of renderings of the three Greenwich St. towers that will rise along the eastern edge of the 16-acre World Trade Center site. The final designs were unveiled yesterday at 7 World Trade Center. The buildings are scheduled to begin construction in January. The three towers’ new designs, described in a press release as “refined and more detailed......

The rebuilding process at Ground Zero took another small step forward today as final plans for Towers 2, 3, and 4 were unveiled. Larry Silverstein and a group of architects unveiled updated designs for the buildings, which are supposed to start construction in January. These plans are more detailed than the initial designs released last year, with more information on the lobbies, public spaces, and building facades. Silverstein says the buildings will be environmentally......

Various officials followed up with some more thoughts about Frank Gehry designing his very first playground for Battery Park. Mayor Bloomberg said, “Everything Frank Gehry touches is unique, and I’m sure it will be a great park." Check out this quote, via the Post:"I once gave money to redo a children's playground in Central Park. I can't go in it because you have to have a child. But when I look in it, people seem......

Congratulations to everyone graduating this month! As NYU's commencement was today, with speaker jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, we decided to list the many NYC commencement speakers, with help from The Chronicle of Higher Education (if we've missed any or gotten it wrong, let us know in comments): Barnard College: Anna Deveare Smith, playwright-actress CUNY Lehman College: Representative Charles Rangel CUNY Brooklyn College: Roberta S. Matthews, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Brooklyn......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: shots fired early this evening on Blake Ave. in Brooklyn, a homicide/suicide on 225th St. in Queens this afternoon, and a sexual assault early this morning on West 120th St. in Manhattan. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wants black activist Sonny Carson stricken from the list of nominees for proposed street names because she thinks he was divisive and anti-white. Former Black Panther and current Brooklyn Council Member Charles......

Uh-oh. The Santiago Calatrava-designed World Trade Center PATH transit hub is now estimated to be $1.2 billion over budget by the construction company's contractor. Previous estimates pegged building the critically-praised "bird-like" structure at $2.2 billion in 2005, after the Port Authority approved a revised design. Why the high estimate? Labor costs and materials. The Port Authority's executive director Anthony Shorris wrote in a letter to PA Chairman Anthony Coscia (hello, CYA paper trail), "We have......

Design nerds won’t be disappointed by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s 2006 triennial. The exhibition, featuring the work of 87 designers and firms, touches animation, new media, fashion, robotics, architecture, medicine, graphics and everything in-between. Curated by Barbara Bloemink, Ellen Lupton and Matilda McQuaid, the show makes it clear that New York and design are no mismatched pair. Standouts include Josh Davis’ program-generated vector graphics, Jason Miller’s haunting retro furnishings (picture dusty red tables......

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......

The Mayor will hold a press conference today at noon about the Roosevelt Tram incident, as he and Governor Pataki want to know what exactly happened last night to strand 69 commuters in two tram cars. We don't know what happened, but we do know it was like a local media dream: Human interest drama (kids, babies, old lady, Hasidim), iconic and curious NYC vehicle, and a happy ending, albeit it one in the......

Leave it to Santiago Calatrava, the golden boy of rebuild NYC design at the moment for his beautiful Port Authority transit hub planned for Ground Zero, to design a gorgeous tramway between lower Manhattan and Governor's Island. (The tramway isn't a certainty, but it's a great, flashy "This is what our future could be" symbol.) The city and state announced that they are looking for "visionary ideas for the redevelopment of Governor's Island" to......

Praise be: The NY Times reports that building of the new World Trade Center have commenced with the first work on Santiago Calatrava's PATH transit hub for the Port Authority. Workers constructed a wooden trough that will become a retaining wall for a future, temporary PATH train placement (if you like learning about where the rebar goes, you'll love this article). And while some September 11 victims' groups want to stop the Port Authority's building,......

Until March 5, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a show dedicated to Santiago Calatrava, the already-beloved in NY architect behind the new PATH Transit Hub at the World Trade Center. The show, Santiago Calatrava: Sculpture into Architecture, features two dozen sculptures amongst drawings and architectural models. However, in a skeptical review in the NY Times, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wonders how the sculptures actually figure into Calatrava's process (plus, the sculptures are "mostly derivative......

Families of 9/11 victims are at it again. Not content after getting rid of the the International Freedom Center they are now trying to halt construction of the one thing that actually seems to be moving along at Ground Zero: Santiago Calatrava's PATH station (a station the Post calls "controversial" to which our response is "don't you mean soaring? And controversial for what? The planned shopping area?"). Seems that they are upset over an......

- Some families of September 11 victims want to block the building of Santiago Calatrava's PATH Transit Hub at Ground Zero - The NYPD is offering $12,000 for information leading to an arrest in the murder of Chinese food delivery man Fahua Chen, raising the total to $13,000; his daughter was also granted a visa to come to the U.S. - The Washington Square redesign has been nixed - Bill Gates visited Columbia University, showing......

Eager to reassure everyone that things were moving along at Ground Zero, Governor Pataki's World Trade Center flunky chief of staff, said that the PATH Transit Hub designed by Santiago Calatrava would offer 200,000 square feet of space for retailers and bidding will start in a few months. All hell, does this mean there will be an Olive Garden down there, to compete with the Applebee's at the Battery Park Regal Cinemas? The NY Times......

When word came out last March that Santiago Calatrava was going to build a luxury residential tower on South Street, we were cautiously excited. Sure, we'd never be able to afford to live in one of the "townhouses in the sky" but they would certainly be another jewel in the cities skyline and you can't have too much good architecture. Of course we weren't holding our breath as most of the time when something......

Yesterday's groundbreaking ceremony of the World Trade Center transit hub saw a number of politicians and designer Santiago Calatrava to the mark the first construction activity at Ground Zero. Calatrava and his daughter Sofia released doves/white pigeons into the air from Falcon Environmental Services with Governors Pataki (NY) and Codey (NJ), Senator Clinton, Mayor Bloomberg, and Tranportation Secretary Minetta looking on. The $2.2 billion transporation center will bring an estimated 10,000 construction jobs downtown, but......

Today, the Port Authority will break ground on the new transit hub at the World Trade Center. Gothamist is especially excited because the structure is the gloriously ethereal design by Santiago Calatrava, and we actually can imagine a day when it will be completed (by the end of 2009, according to estimates), versus the slow, stop-start nature of the Freedom Tower. Politicians will be converging on Church Street today, as this groundbreaking comes close......

Santiago Calatrava's design for the PATH hub at the World Trade Center has been modified to meet security concerns. The base has been reinforced with more steel beams and some of the glass in the buliding's "wings" has been eliminated/ The Port Authority approved the design, which will cost over $2.2 billion. Groundbreaking for the stunning building will be on September 6, and the hub is supposed to open in 2009. Calatrava's design has......

The U.S. Department of Transportation is giving New York and New Jersey $899 million for transit projects at the World Trade Center. The bulk of the money, $478 million, will go to an underground screening center that "would be the security conduit for all vehicles entering the ramps, roadways, loading docks and parking areas serving the new trade center buildings." Hey, that means 12 years after the first World Trade Center bombing, the government is......

While the actual Freedom Tower is years away, people can get a glimpse of a newly constructed one: Legoland out in Carlsbad, CA has updated their Miniland New York by constructing the new WTC site. Legoland explains the work:Starting in December 2004, LEGOLAND California’s Master Model Designer, William Webb, in collaboration with a fellow Master Model Builder from Denmark, began sketching the design and creating a 3D computer model of the Freedom Tower using published......

Here's a little Mayoral Race 2005 action to tie us over: Congressman and mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner held a protest against the West Side Stadium yesterday, but he was heckled by trade union guys. According to Newsday, the trade unionists were more "amused" than menacing, and called Weiner a "loser." But Gothamist could feel sorry for Weiner, because those union guys could probably take him, it turns out that Weiner heckled back. Another Democratic mayoral......

Opening today at MoMA QNS: Tall Buildings, a showcase of 25 high-rise buildings designed in the last 10 years. The exhibit takes a look at the evolution of the architectural genre for the 21st century, exploring innovations in structure and program as well as social and urban implications. Santiago Calatrava, Norman Foster, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers are some of the architects represented in this exhibit. Many of the buildings featured......

Santiago Calatrava is continuing to put his imprint on downtown Manhattan: The Times' David Dunlap reports that he's designing a new residential building near the South Street Seaport, which "would take the form of an offset stack of 45-foot glass cubes, a dozen in all, each intended to house only one or two families." And from the rendering, it looks amazing. At this point, it doesn't seem the building's 1000 foot height will be......

– Fuhgeddabout putting that sign in Brooklyn – Fried chicken helps people make decisions – Predictions for the Blogging in 2004 – Microsoft gets tough with teenagers – Separated at Birth: John Kerry and Herman Munster – The New Elvis: Spotting Spalding Gray? – The Law & Order Coloring Book on Conan O'Brien – NY Times and Newsweek tell us what happened to the people who did the Blair Witch Project, finally putting our worries......

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......

The designs for the new downtown transit hub were unveiled and New York swoons for designer Santiago Calatrava. Ethereal and gorgeous, this design must, in our opinion, go beyond the Port Authority's wildest desires to make the new transit hub like Grand Central, it seems to welcome as well as inspire with the 150 foot canopied wings that rise up "like a bird's wings." What helps is that the interior spaces are filled with......

The design for the new lower Manhattan transit hub will be unveiled today, and NY1 have an exlcusive interview with designer Santiago Calatrava. He tells them: "The lightness that you will experience in the building, the idea of rising up off the ground, the idea of the fly and the lightness and transparency bringing the light down below to the tracks, is a response of our culture to the tragedy. It is a response of......

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.......