The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and New York New Visions announced today a panel that will select a short list of candidates for a design study of the World Trade Center site and surrounding areas. The six panelists include Toshiko Mori, Chair of the Department of Architecture of the Harvard Design School and Richard N. Swett, the only architect to serve in Congress during the 20th Century. Since announcing a design study on August 19th and issuing a Request for Qualifications, the LMDC has received hundreds of submissions from around the world. The panel will narrow the field of candidates to 15 to 20, out of which the LMDC will select five teams to prepare additional concept plans for the next phase of the planning process.

LMDC Chairman John C. Whitehead said, "The LMDC is extremely pleased by the hundreds of responses we have received from around the globe. The design study is intended to engage the best and brightest minds in helping to shape the future of Lower Manhattan. We are confident that out of this extensive planning process will emerge a truly beautiful and vibrant Lower Manhattan."

LMDC President and Executive Director Louis R. Tomson said, “I want to thank the panelists for volunteering their time to help us narrow the field of participants and New York New Visions for partnering with us in the selection process.”

New York New Visions Executive Committee Co-chairs Mark Ginsberg, AIA and Marcie Kessner, AICP, said, “We are pleased that New York New Visions is assisting LMDC in creating a process to obtain a wide range of design talent.”

The following six panelists were selected based on recommendations from New York New Visions, a coalition of 21 architecture, engineering, planning, landscape architecture and design organizations:

Toshiko Mori, Professor in Practice and Chair, Department of Architecture, Harvard Design School
Toshiko Mori is the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in Practice of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture [at GSD]. She is the principal of Toshiko Mori Architect, which was established in 1981 in New York. Her firm's work has been widely published and has received awards and prizes internationally. She is an advisor to the Montreal Museum for Decorative Arts and the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. Prior to joining the Faculty of Design of GSD, Mori taught for more than a decade at the Cooper Union. She has been a visiting faculty member at Columbia University and Yale University, where she was the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor in 1992.

Eugenie L. Birch, FAICP, Professor and Chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning
University of Pennsylvania
Professor Birch has published widely in two fields, the history of planning and contemporary planning and housing. Her articles have appeared in such publications as the Journal of Urban History, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of the American Planning Association and Planning magazine. Her book, The Unsheltered Woman: Housing in the Eighties is a collection of essays generated by a Ford Foundation sponsored research project undertaken with Donna E. Shalala.
She has been a Visiting Scholar at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario (1997), a Foreign Scholar at the University of Hong Kong (1995) and a Visiting Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (1994). Professor Birch served as president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, co-edited the Journal of the American Planning Association, and was president of the Society of American City and Regional Planning History. From 1990 through 1995, Dr. Birch was a member of the New York City Planning Commission. She is currently engaged in research on the rise of downtown housing funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Richard N. Swett, FAIA
In 1990, Richard N. Swett was elected in New Hampshire to the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the only architect to serve in Congress during the 20th century. While a congressman, he served as a member of the Committee on Public Works and Transportation as well as the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He co-authored the Congressional Accountability Act - the landmark legislation that requires Congress to abide by the same laws it passes for the country. In 1998, Swett was appointed by President Clinton to be U.S. Ambassador to Denmark. A licensed architect in California and New Hampshire, Swett is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. His experience in the private sector encompasses architectural design, project management, corporate management, project development, and finance.

Kinshasha Holman Conwill
Kinshasha Holman Conwill is an arts and management consultant. Her most recent major project is A Cultural Blueprint for New York City, a non-partisan, citywide special project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, for which she served as project director and managing editor of its report, Culture Counts: Strategies for a More Vibrant Cultural Life for New York City. She joined the Studio Museum in Harlem as Deputy Director in 1980 and served as Director from 1988 to 1999. She is Chairman of the National Museum Services Board, a member of the Board of Overseers of CalArts, and a member of the boards of the Municipal Art Society of New York and New Visions for Public Schools. She is a member of the National Task Force for Museums & Community, an initiative of the American Association of Museums, and a member of the steering committee for the 21st Century Learner initiative of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Ms. Conwill previously served as Assistant Exhibit Coordinator for the Museum of the American Indian in New York City and Coordinator of Activities for the Frank Lloyd Wright Hollyhock House, and also taught art in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She has previously served on the boards of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Association of Art Museum Directors, and Independent Sector, as a member of the Smithsonian Council, and as a panelist for the NEA, the NEH, IMLS, the New York State Council on the Arts, and The California Arts Council."

Terence Riley, Chief Curator of the Department of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art Terence Riley studied architecture at the University of Notre Dame and Columbia University and before joining the Museum established an architectural practice with John Keenen. Riley's work has been published and exhibited widely. In 1989, Riley curated "Paul Nelson Filter of Reason," the inaugural exhibition at the Arthur Ross Architecture Galleries at Columbia University, where he served as Director until 1991. He also directed exhibitions on the work of Iacov Chernikhov and a restaging of MoMA's first exhibition on architecture entitled "Exhibition 15: The International Style and The Museum of Modern Art". He has been an adjunct faculty member at the Harvard Design School since 1987. He is currently working on an exhibition of the early work of Mies van der Rohe which will open at MoMA in 2001.

Michael Van Valkenburgh
Michael Van Valkenburgh,F.A.S.L.A., F.A.A.R., is principal of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. Landscape Architects PC in New York City and Boston and the Charles Eliot Professor of Practise of landscape Architecture at Harvard University. Michael's firm has recently won awards from Progressive Architecture, the American Society of Landscape Architects and from Places magazine for the Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh that was designed collaboratively with the artist Ann Hamilton. His design of the Vera List Courtyard at the New School, completed along with Matthew Urbanski and Martin Puryear, is one of Manhattan's most beautiful contemporary courtyards. Current projects of his office include the redesign of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, Segment Five of the Hudson River Park, Teardrop Park at Battery Park City and the master plan for Brooklyn Bridge Park with HR+A. Mr. Van Valkenburgh was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 1988, and been awarded research grants by the Graham Foundation, the Walker Art Center and the
National Endowment for the Arts Design Arts Program.

The design study is open to licensed architects and professional planners and landscape architects. The deadline for responses to the RFQ is Tuesday, September 17, 5pm EST. Responses have been received from around the United States and every continent except Antarctica, including countries such as Great Britain, Belgium, Uruguay, Australia, Malaysia, Lusotho, South Africa and Switzerland. The outside panel will work over the next two weeks to narrow the submissions to 15 to 20 and will consider the following criteria in evaluating submissions: quality of work product as demonstrated by work samples of past projects evincing inspiration and risk taking; innovative and outstanding work experience and unique qualifications, such as experience in designing mixed–use urban environments and experience with mass transit centers; and commitment of principals to lead the team.

An LMDC committee will then select up to five teams by early October. Each team will receive a $40,000 stipend to develop initial designs for the site and surrounding areas based on alternative program requirements currently in development by the Port Authority and Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Concurrent with the intensive RFQ design process, LMDC/Port Authority planning staff and consultants, including Beyer Blinder Belle and Peterson Littenberg, will continue to explore varied approaches to the World Trade Center site. Based on the work developed by the teams, Port Authority and LMDC in-house staff and consultants, three new plans will be released to the public by the end of the year, completing the second phase in the three-phase planning process. The LMDC and Port Authority expect to release a final recommended land use plan by Spring 2003.