By Jane Standley BBC correspondent in New York

More than 400 architectural firms from nearly 30 countries have put themselves forward for the job of rebuilding the World Trade Center site.

The all-star line up includes Britain's Lord Norman Foster, the Italian architect Renzo Piano and the Americans Philip Johnson and Robert Stern.

The first designs were dismissed as boring

The job was thrown open to international competition last month, following the rejection of the initial six designs for the site as boring and too office-block orientated.

The architects, who come from every continent except Antarctica, have sent in their qualifications for what is going to be one of the most prestigious construction jobs of the coming decades.

Some sent courier boxes of documents to get their submissions in on time, alongside the huge mailbags of work which a panel of six American architectural experts now has to begin sifting through.

Strong criticism

The panel has only until the end of the month to whittle the applicants down to fewer than 20.

Then the Port Authority, which owns the World Trade Center site, and the body set up to oversee the site's rebuilding - the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation - will further reduce them to a handful.

Those firms will get a financial grant to go off and develop their ideas.

The two bodies came under strong criticism a couple of months ago when they presented six initial designs that made reconstructing large office buildings their focus.

A final plan and architect for the World Trade Center site would be selected by the spring of 2003, with rebuilding intended to begin around the second anniversary of the attacks.