WTC Transit Hub Features Open-Air Design

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040122/ap_on_re_us/attacks_transit_hub_4

By AMY WESTFELDT, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - A transit hub at the World Trade Center site will shine sunlight 60 feet underground and have a dome that can be opened to the sky each Sept. 11, design drawings released Thursday show.

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

The station, serving the PATH commuter line linking Manhattan and New Jersey, will have walkways to link it to 14 New York City subway lines and nearby ferry service.

New York City has a tradition of creating buildings that become "almost public sculptures," said Calatrava, who has designed buildings around the world including the stadium for the Athens Olympics this summer.

The station, located to the east of where the Twin Towers once stood, will have canopies resembling wings that emerge 150 feet in the air from a glass and steel dome. The themes, Calatrava said at a news conference, are "a new world, life, flight and hope."

The dome is designed to allow a ceremonial opening each year on the anniversary of the terrorist attack so that "the building itself is expressing the memory as a permanent sign of the 11th of September," Calatrava said.

"It is spectacular," Gov. George Pataki said, calling the proposal "something that will not only be a practical transit hub ... but it will be a tribute to those we lost."

It is the third presentation of designs for the 16-acre site. Architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind last month presented models of the Freedom Tower, and designers Michael Arad and Peter Walker last week offered drawings of a ground zero memorial, to be on the footprints of the vanished towers.

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

The trade center's PATH station had served 67,000 daily passengers before the attacks.

The proposed design for a permanent PATH station would let daylight shine on the four train platforms, 60 feet below ground.

"We are bringing the light through the building and making the light one of the pillars of the building," Calatrava said.

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.

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I think that this design is outstanding! I love it!