Architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind are scheduled to unveil their design for the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower Dec. 19, four days after Gov. George Pataki’s deadline for the clashing designers to agree.
Pataki, Mayor Mike Bloomberg and developer Larry Silverstein are also expected to attend the ceremony at Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan. The tower will be the tallest in the world and will be the first to rise from the World Trade Center site. It “will incorporate innovative cable technology…and generate much of its own technology,” according to a press release issued by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. on Monday.
After a ceremony last Thursday raising a steel beam at 7 W.T.C. across the street, Childs said the top of the tower will use Downtown winds to generate electricity. He said the top may be made of lattice and it “definitely will be open to the air. It won’t be glass all of the way up.”
Childs, who also designed 7 W.T.C., and Libeskind denied news reports that they are no longer speaking to each other.
Libeskind’s World Trade Center site plan was selected in February by the governor, mayor, the L.M.D.C., and the site’s owner, the Port Authority. But Silverstein, who owns the leasing rights to the trade center site, asked Childs to design the Freedom Tower.
The architects’ relationship has clearly been strained and even the L.M.D.C. release referred to an “often spirited design effort between Childs and Libeskind.”
Construction is expected to begin next August.
