The winning 9/11 memorial proposal could look a lot different than anything seen by the public so far, after the designers incorporate suggestions from the competition jury, a top redevelopment official said yesterday.
Kevin Rampe, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which is sponsoring the competition, said jury members will be meeting with the eight finalist memorial design teams as they move toward choosing a winner.
And that could lead to changes in designs that have drawn a flood of public criticism.
“I’m sure they’ll suggest refinements and changes and there’s probably a high chance that the ultimately selected memorial will be different from any of the eight” finalists now on display at the Winter Garden, Rampe said at a breakfast forum sponsored by Crain’s New York.
Rampe also suggested the jury is listening to its critics, saying the designs will change “in response to the jury’s concerns and the jury’s considerations and probably, I’m sure, the jury is going to hear the public.”
Rampe said the jury has not asked to go back and look at any of the 5,193 submissions it discarded in the first phase of the competition.
A group of architects known as New York New Visions has sent an open letter to jurors criticizing the finalists and suggesting they reconsider the rejected designs.
The jury is expected to choose a winning design before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Rampe said he has asked New York New Visions to review the design guidelines written by Ground Zero planner Daniel Libeskind that will determine the size, shape and look of the office buildings that surround the memorial.
Libeskind’s guidelines were criticized as being too restrictive and not allowing room for other architects to create buildings for the site.
Rampe said he also wants to seek the opinion of Norman Foster and the other architects tapped by World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein.