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......

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......

He made his name in London, Paris, Madrid, and Tokyo, and now he's making his mark on New York, too, with four major projects in development. Richard Rogers, one of Britain's handful of architect-knights, has just been awarded the 2007 Pritzker Prize, architecture's top honor. For many people, Rogers' most iconic project is still the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which he completed in 1977 while partners with Renzo Piano. The inside-out building lasciviously exposed......

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 sun was almost shining yesterday when we headed over to Pier 40 for a behind-the-scenes, work-in-progress glimpse of a new exhibition as it was being installed for its end-of-the-week opening tomorrow. The Good Life: New Public Spaces for Recreation, presented by the Van Alen Institute, celebrates architects, designers and artists working with an eye toward 21st century recreation. Curated by Zoe Ryan and designed by Dan Wood and Amale Andraos of WORKac, the......

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......

New York Magazine decides to look at the city in the year 2016 in terms of architecture and real estate development - and how that'll impact New Yorkers. It's a great look at how drastically the city could change in ten years, which is all overwhelming, exciting, and kind of scary, because for every rendering of glassy buildings, what does that mean for the neighborhoods? Are they plans for more affordable housing to meet......

At noon today, Suzanne Vega and Lou Reed will play a free concert at the opening of 7 World Trade Center. As we all know, 7 WTC is the only tower to be rebuilt since 9/11; the plaza already opened this week. The first tenants (the developers of the building - Silverstein Properties) will move in Friday, followed by the architects (Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel and Richard Rogers) working on the three buildings being......

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 Javits Center is like the stepchild of the city's development projects: No one really cares - they want flashy architects or scary renderings of what a Jets stadium might look like. But now the Javits Development Corporation has selected an architect to design a new expansion, British architect Richard Rogers. Not only is he knighted, he designed the Centre Pompidou in Paris (with Renzo Piano) and the Millennium Dome in London, making Gothamist wonder......

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......