Floating Island is a programmed landscape flowing above the WTC site: a horizontal urbanscape joining the surrounding buildings and reclaiming public arena in the heart of the city.

It can be appreciated successful businesses no longer always demand the physical space they once did. We have approached the end of office buildings, their fixed geometries and unyielding interiors. The digital age shrinks infrastructural spaces and spurs us to reimagine the efficient flow of information and people. A truly multi-media metropolis, Floating City provides the requisite of business spaces – conference areas, meeting rooms, working stations – without restricting access to the public. In the nooks and corridors of the new City, urban life permeates the commercial world: recreation centers, hotels and restaurants, working gardens, parks, trees, and even a man-made lake.

Traditional skyscrapers stand tall like as isolated islands in the city, discrete and impersonal. We have created numerous horizontal circulations through Midtown and open channels, to more diverse communities from the waterfront to heart of Manhattan. This new organizational structure diminishes the machine aesthetic and social divisions of the modern era. The visual symbol of skyscrapers demand is obsolete; the greatest monument we can offer is a renewed public space and architecture of cohesion.