One is a simple and emphatic number. With one, there is no confusion about uniformity and direction. We know, for instance, that all the planets travel around the sun in one direction. But two is greater -- it is less alone. With two, there is the tying of knots and the snapping of fingers. There is also the complexity of an argument -- the richness of voices.

Two architects -- not one -- deserve to win the competition to redesign the World Trade Center site. They are the American architect Daniel Libeskind, and The Think team, whose principals include Shigeru Ban, Tokyo; Frederic Schwartz, New York; Ken Smith, New York; and Rafael Violy, New York. Both teams have argued their ideas with humanity and compassion. They reject the obvious links between an omnipotent, tallest-in-the-world architecture and the vengeful tactics of the George W. Bush leadership. Both schemes consider the poignant meaning of the destruction of the WTC. Their most powerful ideas move me deeply.

Here is one: Libeskind's design for unprecedented public space. This is a magnificent wasteland that spreads roughly 6½ hectares across the bedrock of the excavated World Trade Center site. No Victorian lamps here, thank God, or lollipops of greenery. But a carcass of stone that could become the most meditative public space in the world.

Here is the other: The latticework towers proposed by the Think team. Designed as fragile totems that rise as tall as the original twin towers, they open themselves to the more complex urban psyche of the 21st century. Their three-dimensional truss structures -- designed to stand empty initially -- straddle the footprints of the devastated buildings. Arup Engineers have conceived of a structure that is "transparent to explosions." But the true power of these structures reaches beyond the security of a nation to a new security in our minds -- to an architecture that invites intellectual curiosity and the possibilities for cultural humility. Called the World Cultural Center, and estimated to cost $1-billion (U.S.), the towers are to be filled over time with cultural institutions designed by a variety of architects.

One of the tests of any successful design is whether it inspires you to want to go there -- not in a year or two, but immediately. When Libeskind describes his scheme, you can't help but want to travel with him to the bedrock foundations of the WTC left raw and exposed by the terrorist attack. This is where the footprints of Towers 1 and 2 began, a territory Libeskind describes as "hallowe

d, sacred ground."

Other competitors were brilliant in parts -- Foster and Partners' transportation scheme brings clarity to the complex task of city infrastructure. But they messed up. Foster and Partners proposed the world's tallest office tower, an architectural move full of British bombast given that the New York market is suffering from a 15-per-cent office-vacancy rate. A team led by Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) introduced the critical idea of the global city and the need to blend cultural space, sky gardens and offices in vertical, highly dense communities. But their architectural worms shooting into the sky were less than convincing. Last week, the SOM team pulled out of the competition.

The beauty of the site's bedrock is a compelling story, and Libeskind's scheme never deviates from it. Rising from the bedrock are the great slurry walls, originally constructed as an enormous concrete bathtub to hold back the Hudson River. In Libeskind's renderings, an armature of steel reinforces the rough walls. Visitors are invited to enter an interpretive museum and then travel 20 metres to the bedrock and into what the architect calls the "Memory Foundations."

For months now, crowds have poured into Lower Manhattan to mourn at the devastated site. Many have stood on tiptoe to peer over the construction hoardings. Others have stood on a hastily designed viewing platform. Families have been invited to look down on the burial ground from One Liberty Plaza where the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) has its offices. Libeskind memorializes this public act of mourning by designing an above-ground viewing platform that arcs around most of the site.

By now, the architecture of Libeskind has gained an international currency. He is best known for the startling design of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, a building of disturbing voids that launched his signature use of sharply angled forms sliced with striations of glass. His redevelopment of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto picks up on this language of bucking volumes and uses it to breathe new life into a building whose interior has been botched over the past couple of decades.

For the WTC site, Libeskind animates the perimeter at grade level with a series of his signature-type buildings. Some appear to offer vast glass elevations while others are clad to look like the skin of reptiles. Similarily, the World Trade Center scheme by the Think team presents eight mid-size office towers and one hotel located around the edge of the site.

Like Think, Libeskind accepts the insanity of reinstating office space 110-storeys above the ground. Instead, he offers an emblematic, taut tower with a sharply angled roof that measures 1,776 feet to match the year of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence.

For inspiration, Think looked across the Atlantic to the Eiffel Tower's truss system. For his visual trigger, Libeskind looked across the New York harbour to the Statue of Liberty. And it resonated, the way it did when he was a Polish emigrant. "I arrived by ship to New York as a teenager, an immigrant, and like millions of others before me, my first sight was the Statue of Liberty and the amazing skyline of Manhattan. I have never forgotten that sight or what it stands for. This is what this project is all about."

In the end, the brilliance of the steel lattice towers by Think cannot be disputed. The towers should go to Think. The "Memory Foundations" public space should go to Libeskind. Other international competitions should be organized for the design of the surrounding mid-size towers.

At week's end, the public consultation and comment period for the new World Trade Center design plans comes to a close.

The LMDC and the New York Port Authority, in consultation with representatives from the governor's office, the mayor's office and leaseholders, such as Larry Silverstein, will select the winning plan. A decision on the winning plan is expected by the end of February. To view the competing schemes, go to http://www.renewNYC.com
lrochon@globeandmail.ca