We may have been wounded, but we’re still here. One year after the events of September 11, we have not only survived, we have transcended the blows. While we continue to grieve, the human and material losses at the World Trade Center and the attacks on the Pentagon have unleashed pent-up energies, flooding the world with creative ideas. What, we all wonder, should replace all that went before?

The search for an answer to that question has galvanized universal attention. In an outpouring of responses, private citizens and professional designers are inundating the media with schemes to replace the World Trade Center and alter the future of Lower Manhattan. Television, the magazines (including Architectural Record), schools of architecture, lectures and seminars, books, and Web sites are jammed with schemes, from studious to half-cracked. In the aftermath, it seems that everyone has become a designer.