Justin Berzon talks late into the night, his voice hoarse. Yesterday he was on the phone answering questions to an interview that began at 3:30 a.m. and ended just before dawn.

“I don’t sleep anymore,” he says incredulously. The clock on his computer says it’s a little after 3 a.m. “I set my personal best record for 44 hours. I’m learning the meaning of the ‘city that never sleeps.'”

Everything right now is on hold. School. Sleep. Work.

Everything except for what Berzon, a Medill senior, considers to be the best plan to redevelop the World Trade Center site, 16 acres of land left bare in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Certainly it’s not an original idea,” he says about the complexity of his plan. “But I figured out a way to satisfy everybody’s interests. Everyone wins.”

Less than 18 months after the attacks, there are many questions left unanswered: How to honor the lives of people lost on that day while at the same time keeping intact the spirit of downtown Manhattan from flailing?

Berzon thinks he has the answer, and he has spent the majority of every waking hour this quarter trying to make his proposal heard. He calls his proposal, “Standing Tall.”

‘Standing Tall’

Berzon has no architectural background. It’s not his passion. But he is compelled — perhaps obsessed — to bring the towers back to New York City.

By using computer graphics programs, satellite images of the World Trade Center and blueprint figures he analyzed at the site during a journalism internship Fall Quarter in Greenwich Village.

But he has a couple of obstacles: Two plans were chosen Feb. 4 as the final options for redeveloping the site. These two proposals, from Studio Daniel Libeskind and the THINK group, were part of a larger competition held in mid-December. The teams have well defined proposals for buildings on the site as well as architectural credibility.

Despite this, Berzon knows that his proposal has a chance of getting discovered.

A controversy is brewing among the families of those who died on Sept. 11 and architects involved in the two proposals. Government officials have provided restrictions on the “bathtub” — the WTC’s former seven level basement — of Ground Zero, the lower levels of the World Trade Center buildings, which could alter the structure of the two designers’ original plans.

It is this controversy, along with public sentiments opposing the two designs, that Berzon hopes will propel his idea of rebuilding the towers into the forefront.

Berzon’s proposal for rebuilding the towers has been publicized and championed by a syndicated columnist, Deroy Murdock, in National Review Online. An editorial he wrote about his design also can now be picked up by newspapers that subscribe to the Howard Scripp News Service, including the Chicago Sun-Times.

As a result, Berzon has received hundreds of e-mails from Afghanistan to Texas, praising his proposal. Military officials have shown their support.

For the past few weeks, Berzon has spoken with publicists, city officials and people who call to ask, “How can I help?” He also opened his own Web site last week, www.justinberzon.com, outlining his proposal step by step, complete with before and after pictures of Lower Manhattan under his plan.

The Web site’s developer, Gaurav Verma — a McCormick senior and Berzon’s friend — said the site went up in a night’s notice as a way for people to communicate with Berzon. Verma’s hometown in Torrance, Calif., picked up Berzon’s editorial on the Scripps newswire earlier this week.

“I’ve been getting 200 e-mails a day for the first two days,” Berzon said. “All of them have been in support.”

Berzon’s office is his room in the Foster-Walker Complex, where a giant poster of the New York City skyline hangs above his bed. Berzon says he will not stop until New York City residents and the general public hear his proposals. Both, he says, have the power to control the future of the New York City skyline the towers now represent for America.

Why not rebuild the towers?

Berzon, who lived two blocks from the World Trade Center this fall, would walk past Ground Zero, observing the site intensely. During one of those walks he realized rebuilding the towers could be done while still preserving the footprints of the old twin towers.

“In the last few weeks of my internship, they put up a permanent viewing area with an official blueprint and I said, ‘Wait a minute, this is a 16 acre site and the towers each had a footprint of one acre each,” Berzon says. “So you are telling me that the World Trade Center has two acres of space on 16 acres and there isn’t a way to put them back?’

“The most logical spot was to put them in the northeast corner, and I was saying in my head, ‘Somebody’s gotta be preparing this.'”

But no one had. And even if someone had proposed this idea, a design contest sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, a state agency created after Sept. 11, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, already had decided on the finalists.

At times, the selection process appeared rushed or changed, New Yorkers have said. It is in part their discontent that gives Berzon hope.

Ed McGinnis, an architect in Manhattan who had his own proposal for the site, says the selection process began like the old adage, “a horse designed by a committee is a camel.” With the public and Port Authority involved in the design selection, the horse became “a big camel,” he says.

“The process, I think, was a fiasco in the summer,” says McGinnis, who has taught at New York University Masters Program for Real Estate Development. “It was overwhelming for the public.”

The yearlong effort to find an adequate design is still going, and the time spent sifting through proposals has earned Berzon a couple of months to promote his own ideas. He feels the towers’ significance in New York is unshakable, disagrees and does not believe that we should change the skyline of New York — if only because the reason they disappeared was a savage act of terrorism.

“To give in and not rebuild is nothing short of negotiation with the terrorist,” Berzon says. “By rebuilding them, that would be defeat of the entire goal of the terrorists, saying, ‘In the long run you didn’t change our city. You didn’t change our skyline.’

“Without these towers, there’s no New York.”

The Designs

In the nearly a year and a half after the New York skyline was transformed, local officials and government committees have worked with the public, architects and the bureaucratic interests to develop the next steps.

After proposing six plans in July that were roundly disparaged by the public and panned by architecture critics for being short-sighted and lacking “historical imagination,” the Lower Manhattan Development Corportation created a design contest early last fall.

With more than 400 submissions last year, the LMDC and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey narrowed it down to nine. All of them were from the big shots of architecture. None of them chose to rebuild the towers, but most of the designs included a memorial for the footprints.

Out of the nine, two were selected earlier this month: proposals from a group called Think and from Studio Libeskind.

Think’s proposal involves a pair of tall latticework cultural towers resembling a transparent, outlined version of the original World Trade Center. Libeskind’s proposal invokes jagged imagery, with the buildings shaped in such a way that would allow light to be captured on the surface of the buildings at the exact moment the twin towers were hit every year on Sept. 11.

The two designs focus on memorializing the past while bracing New York’s skyline for the future.

Herbert Muschamp, the architecture critic for the New York Times, argues that for a public to understand the differences between the proposals must be examined in a nontraditional light.

“The Think proposal must be envisioned horizontal
ly, as extruded ground plane,” says Muschamp, whose adamant support for Think proposal has been criticized by other architects. “It allows the development of new urban relationships on and between vertically stacked platforms.

“The Libeskind proposal’s introduction of a clustered crystalline silhouette is the design’s best feature, but does not address what is to my mind a legitimate civic desire for the symbolic retrieval of memory of the WTC’s twin columns,” he says.

Most if not all of the proposals selected last year resemble the spirit of contemporary architecture. For some of the public, two latest proposals seem two futuristic.

“It’s too fancy, something with too much glamour and symbolism and that’s not the World Trade Center,” says Cindy Firman, a New York resident and Weinberg freshman who lives 45 minutes from downtown Manhattan. “The World Trade Center represents the economic prosperity of our country, and if you do something like (what the proposals did), it defeats the purpose. It’s not what the twin towers were.”

It was these designs that left New Yorkers heartbroken, says Berzon, who was born in Manhattan and lived there until sixth grade.

McGinnis, who has been an architect for 40 years, says that architects design for themselves. Because of this, the plans “are a little overwhelming for the average public to appreciate,” he says.

Media and the Message of the towers

Berzon’s voice turns up a few notches. He blames the media for not writing anything criticizing the current proposals. But it is the media that Berzon depends upon to disseminate his message.

“I’ve sent a copy of my plan to every major newspaper, did a research and got the address to Rudy Giuliani, City Hall and city planners,” he said. “What we need now is some public figure, a celebrity, someone to push this idea to catch momentum.”

Unlike many of the other designs touted by officials, Berzon says his proposal attempts to satisfy all the competing interests involved in developing Lower Manhattan. At the same time, it asks all social, political and economic forces to compromise a little.

First, his plan will satisfy the public that wants to see the towers rebuilt. If the towers are moved to the northeast corner of the site, they will not stand on the footprints many purists advocate. This would satisfy those individuals who want to preserve and create a memorial on the site.

The Port Authority wants to restore Greenwich Street, which was blocked out in the development of the towers during the 1970s; its restoration would be possible if the towers are relocated. Berzon’s plan acknowledges this.

By preserving the footprints of the original towers, there is room for a museum, Berzon says, and a spot to develop a transportation super hub below ground, which will help the towers focus on restoring the lost office space.

“And it’s possible and feasible to fit the towers back,” he said. “In essence, you’d be restoring about 90 to 95 percent of lost office space in terms of square footage.”

Berzon’s Proposal Reaches Others

In an editorial, Berzon writes: “Whether or not you agree with replacing them in actuality, ask yourself this: ‘Would you, right now, give anything to have them back if someone said they could be back tomorrow?’ There’s your answer.”

It was these words that touched Murdock, who profiled Berzon for the National Review Online.

“There’s a strong undercurrent of people that want to rebuild the towers,” says Murdock, who is a fellow with the ATLAS economic research foundation. “I hope that Justin’s voice is being heard and that as sentiment grows louder and Liebskind and THINK’s proposals goes lower in stature, the powers that be go with this.”

Murdock, who has been a resident of New York City for 16 years, backs Berzon’s plan for three reasons. One, the destruction of the World Trade Center was an act of war, and the buildings must be restored. Two, the twin towers defined the New York skyline. And, three, the new designs are deficient and do not represent the allure of the city.

“Ideally, if I had a magic wand, I would restore the entire World Trade Center exactly the way it was on Sept. 11,” Murdock says. “But what struck me about (Berzon’s proposal) was that it managed to restore the towers and manage to satisfy almost every interest, which various groups involved in the debate were asking for.”

Murdock points out that there is no other example in history where the country did not rebuild after destruction. When the Pentagon was hit by one of the planes on Sept. 11, killing 184 people, the United States did not block that spot off and “create a garden,” Murdock said.

“We didn’t do that. We rebuilt the Pentagon and I don’t remember anybody saying or families of those who died saying we can’t build upon places buildings collapse.”

Murdock, who lost a neighbor and a relative in the towers, is sensitive to the issue of memorializing the site.

But rather than stop the city’s impact and prominence in the “War of Symbols,” as he calls it, New York should rebuild the towers that impressed him on his first visit to the city.

“They were destroyed as an opening act on the war on terror by the enemy,” says Murdock, who stood on his balcony in Manhattan on Sept. 11, witnessing firsthand the collapse of the towers and waiting impatiently for the dust to finally settle. “I think it’s important that this war, very much a war of symbols, show the rest of the world that we are a resilient country and restoring the twin towers will do this.”

Berzon’s Final Stand

With the quarter winding down, Berzon appears a little straggled and tired. He estimates that he spends 14 hours a day spreading the message of his proposal.

He is sleep-deprived but, during an interview, feels a sudden burst of energy and begins a self-involved dialogue. He portrays a normal conversation between two New Yorkers shortly after the designs were shown to the public.

“There is going to be some hell to pay for this,” one character says as Berzon leans to one side.

“Somebody’s going to object. ‘I can’t wait till Giuliani comes out on this,” he says, leaning to the other side.

“Man, Bloomberg, is going to any day now, going to take the task.”

“What do you mean these are going to be the finalists?!”

It is this type of excitement and energy that is expressed when Berzon thinks about the towers — and lends his amateur plan a little hope. nyou