Better late than never: The Port Authority turned over part of the World Trade Center site to developer Larry Silverstein. This parcel of land is where two of the five planned towers will be built. As part of Silverstein's deal with the Port Authority back in 2006, the PA would control the land but Silverstein, who held the lease to the WTC during the attacks, would be able to build on top of it. The......

A rendering for a building that will replace a Cooper Union engineering building has emerged (above). Designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, the 440,000-square-foot mixed-use building will replace the brown tribute to banality that currently hunkers across from the historic 1859 Cooper Union Foundation building. The 51 Astor Place building is to be demolished; the fate of the connected Starbucks (between Third and Fouth Avenues) is uncertain. The Observer says the proposed building “will......

Wow - yet depressingly not surprising: The Port Authority will have to pay World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein $300,000 for every day past December 31, 2007 that it does not turn over a part of the WTC site. The payment could be as much at $13.5 million or as little as $9.3 million. The PA and Silverstein worked out a deal back in 2006 where the PA would control the land but Silverstein, who......

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......

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......

This morning, construction workers will be laying down the first part of a steel retaining wall for three towers at the World Trade Center site. The towers are the ones designed by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki on the east side of the site. The Port Authority is in charge of laying the foundation for the three towers by the end of 2008, and then WTC developer Larry Silverstein will complete the......

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......

The new designs for the other buildings at the World Trade Center have been released, and forgetting all the other arguments, the computer renderings show a glittering, rather dazzling skyline. And the buildings will be TALL. The NY Times' David Dunlap reports on the new designs and give some analysis of how the buildings would work within the city:The developer of the new World Trade Center unveiled the designs this morning for three skyscrapers......

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......

With the urgent need to renovate their asbestos-filled and cramped headquarters on the East River, the United Nations is considering a move to Brooklyn. Seriously. Over a year ago, the U.N. selected Fumihiko Maki to design their new temporary space on First Avenue, a "glassy, white and sheer but elegant building," but the NY State Senate rejected the plan, so the U.N. had to hunt again for space starting in 2007. There are reports that......

The United Nations has chosen Pritzker Prize-winning Fumihiko Maki to design another building, which will be on First Avenue between 41st and 42nd Streets. According to the Times, "glassy, white and sheer but elegant" design is projected to cost $330 million and to be finished by 2008. Since the older Secretariat building (picture, left) needs to be renovated, Maki's building will house the General Assembly, the Secretariat and their staffs until the Secretariat is......