A New Look For Ground Zero

In the latest sign of a new beginning at New York's Ground Zero, this week officials unveiled plans for three soaring skyscrapers to complement the centerpiece Freedom Tower.

World-famous architects Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, and Fumihiko Maki designed the buildings, which will be sharing the space with the creation of yet another superstar of architecture: Santiago Calatrava.

As of now, there is only an animation to show how the futuristic new World Trade Center Transportation Hub will look, but work has already started on the $2 billion structure. At last year's groundbreaking ceremony you could hear the thrill in the voices of public officials as they described the first time architect Calatrava showed them the design for the building, reports Sunday Morning correspondent Rita Braver.

"Vitality, hope and freedom are just what this station will convey to the tens of thousands of people who will pass thru it every single day," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

Indeed, Bloomberg has reason to be proud that his city will have a building by the Spanish-born Calatrava. He's one of the hottest architects in the world right now and designed the Olympic sports complex in Athens, an opera house on Spain's Canary Islands and a proposal for a Chicago skyscraper which would be the tallest building in North America.

"I think architecture can also transmit — or an artist can transmit — a sense of hope, a sense of belief in the future," he says.

To Calatrava, no building better expresses that belief in the future than one of his favorite landmarks: New York's Grand Central Terminal, constructed at the turn of the last century.

They was thinking, you know, [this] building will survive us and stay there as a testimony of this what we mean, you know, for the next generation," he said.

Calatrava also believes that what makes structures like this great is that they are both functional and beautiful and that people feel like they relate to them. In fact, his buildings are often based on studies of the human body. For example, an eye inspires a planetarium in his native Valencia and an athlete morphs into an abstract design and later into this communications tower in Barcelona.

"I think on the body — why we stand up — the movement, you know. The relations of the arms and the activities — the gestures, the movement," he said.

Calatrava often translates his ideas not only into sketches, but also into pieces of sculpture. He was recently the first living architect in almost 25 years to be honored with an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He's says it's very important to make his buildings "not boring."

"Because making a building boring is an insult to the people," he said.

Calatrava's "not-boring" buildings have emerged from a solid foundation. He has advanced degrees in architecture and engineering. He grew up loving both art and science as the product of an old Spanish family.

Calatrava met his wife Robertina in graduate school and she not only manages the family, including their four children, she runs the business as well — and there is a lot to do as Calatrava is very much in demand.

The Milwaukee Art Museum is now often called simply "The Calatrava." The museum opened in 2001, and Calatrava's addition was designed as a reception hall, but the most extraordinary feature is the wings which can open and close. The new structure has sent the museums attendance rate soaring.

"This is unusual, in that it's a great piece of architecture and it appeals to the man in the street and the woman in the street," Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum David Gordon said.

In New York, the new World Trade Center hub is due to open in 2009 and is also expected to be a crowd pleaser. It will feature a roof that can open to let light filter through. Calatrava says that if you look closely you will see that the new building is meant to symbolize a child's hand holding a dove of peace ready to spread its wings.

"You know the beauty of the station is also a promise that people will go there," he said. "That whole area will be alive, and will complete the life it used to have once, you see. And this is what we want."