WORLD TRADE CENTER COMPETITION
As a response to the Port Authority’s World Trade Center Master Planning Competition in 2002, Matthew Baird eschewed the notion of a fixed-in-time master planning approach and proposed a temporal urban plan that was intended to develop as a microcosm of the city itself. The design builds up over time, incorporating the harmonious and contradictory visions of many planners, architects, engineers, landscape designers, artists, and the public, to create a rich and layered urban fabric. The distinctive vertical iconography of the tower was set against an expansive horizontal memorial lawn, a nod to the inescapable link between the memorial and the obelisk of an iconic tower. The proposed integration of subway, regional rail, and Amtrak into this evolving downtown plan imagined an infrastructure for long-term development on the site and sustainable connectivity to the broader region.