Public to judge six designs for how to replace twin towers

Proposals were unveiled yesterday for what will be New York's most controversial building project for a generation – the rebuilding of the World Trade Centre.

Six different plans for replacing the twin towers with a mixture of memorials, office space and cultural centres were released as part of a process that will involve a massive round of public consultation.

Officials were quick to point out that the project built on the site was likely to be different from anything in the plans.

"The six plans are not final blueprints. Each of the plans represents a package of proposed ideas. These ideas can be mixed and matched and reconstituted based on public input," said John Whitehead, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is overseeing the development of the site.

The six designs share one overriding feature – the idea that whatever is built on the site will act as a memorial to the 2,800 people who died when the twin towers were destroyed in the attacks of 11 September.

The designs are entitled Memorial Plaza, Memorial Square, Memorial Triangle, Memorial Gardens, Memorial Park and Memorial Promenade. Four of the plans unveiled yesterday at Federal Hall in lower Manhattan would incorporate the "footprint" of the towers, while all include a memorial park that could take up two thirds of the site.

However, the designs incorporate other features as well. Despite calls from some relatives of those who died for the area to be left as nothing more than a memorial, the hard-headed business view that the 16-acre site is too valuable not to use has won the day.

The New York Port Authority, which owns the land, has insisted that the designs incorporate what the site once contained – 11 million square feet of office space, 600,000 square feet of retail space and an 800-room hotel. Each plan also envisages the construction of a public transport hub.

The city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has described the proposals as "a start", adding: "I've got my own ideas, which I will certainly write to them [about]."There has been speculation that the Museum of the City of New York and the New York City Opera could be moved to the site to encourage visitors after dark.

While each of the six designs involve towers, none comes close to the 110 storeys of the twin towers. The tallest design has a tower with 85 storeys.

Memorial Plaza would feature an eight-acre open space and a free-standing tower at the north-west corner of the site, while Memorial Triangle would create several triangular parks and triangular building sites. Memorial Park would have a six-acre park.

The development corporation and the Port Authority will narrow the six proposals down to three by September and to one by December.