Architecture school claims strong ties to new World Trade Center designs

Few would guess that the big brown building between the Frist Campus Center and McCosh Hall, home to the University's architecture school, has drawn together half the teams competing to redesign the World Trade Center site and lower Manhattan.

The six teams, three of which have University-affiliated members, have eight weeks and $40,000 to create a comprehensive vision for lower Manhattan.

Seven Princeton-affiliated architects, including five faculty members and two alumni, are on three different teams.

"It's a huge opportunity to do something with the city, to rebuild the city for the 21st century," said Stan Allen GS '88, dean of the architecture school and a member of the team from the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

"Given how small our faculty is, it's pretty extraordinary that we're represented on three of the six teams," Allen said.

Allen attributed the high number of University architects on the teams to the architecture school's focus on exactly the kind of issues the assignment involves.

Jesse Reiser, assistant professor and a member of the United Architects group, echoed this idea. "There's been a growing impulse to look at urban growth and its relation to larger issues, and Princeton has emerged at the forefront of that movement," he said.

Reiser explained that the movement strives to create "a coherent system, and not just the engineering, planning and architectural sides."

Despite this trend, Allen said the architecture school does not have a single style and predicted that the three teams on which the University is represented will "produce very different versions of the site."

Allen's team is a diverse and international group that includes landscape architects and civil engineers.

Allen said his team will focus on making the site a place for the public.

"We're trying to think of a new kind of public infrastructure, not just another monument to American financial dominance, but something the public can believe in and get behind," he said.

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The United Architects team — composed entirely of University-affiliated architects — includes lecturers Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos in addition to Reiser, as well as alumni Kevin Kennon GS '84 and Greg Lynn GS '88.

Van Berkel and Bos founded the UN architectural studio in Amsterdam, and Kennon and Lynn both work for their own firms.

"It's our first time to work together," Reiser said. "In the past we've competed against each other."

Reiser said the United Architects team saw the memorial aspect of the rebuilding as the focus of the site. Its design will focus on the relationship between monument and memorial, Reiser said.

"There's a desire to rebuild, and a desire to monumentalize," he said. "We have to reconcile these almost completely antagonistic impulses."

Peter Eisenman, a visiting professor at the University in 1994, is also involved in the rebuilding, along with architects Richard Meier, Charles Gwathmey and Steven Holl.

In contrast to the first round of the rebuilding contest, which ended this summer, the designs in this round will have up to 40 percent less office space.

The teams are planning not only for a tall office building or two, but also for a memorial, transportation system, hotels, cultural programming space and retail area with a "West Street Promenade."

On Dec. 4, the teams will present their plans for the 16-acre site to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority, who will choose several teams to continue developing their designs.