OSTON, Nov. 12 — Demonstrating the speed with which planning at the World Trade Center site is taking place, Port Authority officials showed early designs for a permanent transportation hub at the site today, incorporating many elements of the temporary PATH station that is already being built.

The preliminary designs include a soaring glass atrium that would allow subway and rail passengers to see skyscrapers towering overhead from several floors below ground level, enabling them to orient themselves to where they are in the downtown landscape almost as soon as they step off the trains.

The designs were unveiled by Robert I. Davidson, the chief architect of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, owner of the site, even as seven teams of designers work to complete their conceptual master plans for the site. He made his presentation at a panel discussion on the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan that was part of the annual Build Boston architecture conference.

The tracks, platforms and mezzanine areas of the temporary station, as well as banks of escalators joining the lower and middle levels of the terminal, are being rebuilt in the pit, on the foundation and column footings of the station that was destroyed in the collapse of the twin towers, according to Mr. Davidson and other Port Authority officials.

That makes it ever more likely that the new PATH terminal will stand almost exactly on the footprints of the former station and that what has so far been referred to as a temporary station is also to be a permanent structure, the officials say. This means the transportation system can be rebuilt more quickly than if a totally new system were created from scratch.

"The notion is that the permanent facilities will come right behind the temporary facilities," Mr. Davidson said. "We've heard from some very large companies that they are very concerned that the permanent transportation is so far away that it might affect their ability to remain in Lower Manhattan."

Mr. Davidson stressed that the designs for the permanent hub were not final and could be changed depending on the plans being put together by the seven design teams, whose master-plan efforts will be made public next month.

Joseph J. Seymour, the executive director of the Port Authority, said during a recent interview and tour of ground zero that decisions about the location of the temporary and permanent PATH terminal were made after it became clear that much of the infrastructure of the original PATH station remained in place or could be easily replaced.

Those include a tunnel that was part of the former PATH station's mezzanine, extending eastward beneath the 1 and 9 subway lines. On the west side of the 1 and 9 lines, where escalators once carried passengers to PATH Square on the former concourse level, portions of the structure remain; those escalators will be rebuilt at the same location.

In the temporary PATH station, passengers will then proceed up stairs or escalators to Church Street, the temporary station's only entrance and exit at ground level.

The aesthetics of the temporary PATH station, which is budgeted at $544 million, will be rough, Mr. Seymour said, with exposed steel and concrete slabs visible. Also, because the tracks and platforms will be open to the elements at both ends, the platforms will not be climate controlled.

Port Authority contractors have been working 12-hour shifts six days a week on the temporary PATH station since the summer.