The destruction of the World Trade Center left a hole where the towers once stood. A professor in Penn State's architecture department has a plan for using the space.

Richard Alden has proposed a site concept to develop a park in the crater. Although his proposal will not be officially considered at this time, Alden, a native New Yorker, said the proposal is a reflection of his interest in bringing rural life back to the city.

As it stands now, Ground Zero is an indent in the earth surrounded by four ramps starting along the four streets bordering the site.

The ramps can be likened to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., Alden said, because they emerge from the ground.

Alden's design proposes a shallow park of in-ground buildings.

Alden describes them as "visibly invisible."

In the plan, the buildings, including restaurants and offices, will gradually be built into the ramps, Alden said.

"It's an attempt to save the hole that's already there," he said.

Alden's plan is to make the destruction positive and reinvent it as a memorial park.

"A smaller Central Park would economically, in the long run, enhance the values of all the real estate that surrounds the pit," Alden said.

"It's a misconceived argument to rebuild buildings. ... The air [in Ground Zero] is poison. The only things that would clean it are plants."

Using his concept, Alden's students proposed designs for the park.

Sarah O'Brien (senior-advertising) worked on the designs.

She said the canvas she and other students worked on was Ground Zero as it looks today.

The students modeled their designs after the styles of other artists, she said.

Some of the students' work is on display in New York as part of an exhibit called Parallel Reflections: On the World Trade Center A Vision of Recovery and Remembrance.

The exhibit is on display at New Century Artists Inc., in New York City until Feb. 1.

"It's pretty humbling [to have my work on display]," O'Brien said.

Alden's design concept is an alternative to the proposed buildings to replace the World Trade Center.

"Architects really work for patrons," Alden said.

"The place has to be expressed as a public interest."

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation are looking to replace as much of the office space lost as possible.

"People in power tend not to be very good clients," Dan Willis, interim architecture department head, said.

Willis explained most people don't have a strong background in architecture and as a result do not always select the best building option for a space.