Dead Spaniard to build on WTC site?

From the NY Times:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Decades before the World Trade Center was conceived, a revolutionary architect drew plans for a rocket-like skyscraper to be built on that very site. Now, a movement is growing to include his ideas in the redevelopment. Antoni Gaudi, whose architecture changed the face of Barcelona, Spain, in the early 1900s, sketched a design in 1908 for a New York hotel that was never built. It is not known why Gaudi's plans were never realized. The drawing called for a cluster of steel and concrete parabolic towers at varying heights surrounding a central tower that would stand 1,048 feet tall, according to Paul Laffoley, the Boston architect leading the effort to give the concept a second chance.

``It's like resurrecting something that should have existed in the past,'' Laffoley said.

He intends to enter the design in the international memorial competition that begins this spring. The agency in charge of rebuilding the site says a plan for the memorial will be chosen by Sept. 11 of this year, the second anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 2,800 people. Inside the tip of the main tower would be a sphere of empty space and then a 412-foot cavern where each victim would be commemorated. Gaudi had wanted to fill that space with slots for each U.S. president, leaving enough room to last until the year 3000.

Art historians, architects and Gaudi enthusiasts are behind the effort to push the plans for inclusion in the master redevelopment scheme. Barcelona artist Marc Mascort i Boix will discuss the idea of reviving the sketches during a panel Thursday in New York. Laffoley insists that Gaudi's design would cut through the political and territorial wrangling involved in rebuilding the site by drawing on its storied past.

``It's 77 years since Gaudi died -- a lot of the other proposals are literal ego trips, but here is a way that everyone can be involved in a historical project from around the world,'' Laffoley said.