NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stark stone plazas, reflecting pools and soaring lights highlighted the eight designs unveiled on Wednesday as finalists for a memorial at the World Trade Center, eliciting responses from applause to anger from those deeply affected by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The designs were chosen by a 13-member jury from 5,201 submissions from 62 countries in the biggest open design contest ever. A winner is slated to be picked by year end.

A number of victim family members promptly rejected every design, saying none preserves enough of the bedrock below the so-called footprints of the fallen twin towers nor includes relics such as the buildings' skeletal remains.

"As far as we're concerned, all these designs fail. If they don't preserve the footprints, they don't do what we want them to do," said Jack Lynch, whose firefighter son died in the towers' collapse. "This is sacred ground to us."

The general public has yet to get much of a look at the eight models, which were put on display on Wednesday across the street from the Trade Center site where 2,752 people died in the attacks by two hijacked jets.

One design featured a field of hanging lights to honor each victim, a second proposed an underground "Museum of September 11," a third envisioned a honeycomb network of tubes forming a "cloud" suspended under glass and a fourth proposed memorial gardens set in a reflecting "pool of tears."

A fifth featured a glass-enclosed garden open each day from 8:46 a.m., the time the first plane struck, to 10:29 a.m., the time the second tower fell. A sixth featured two pools set in a field of cobblestones, the seventh suggested a floating plane of water on top of an enclosed pavilion and the eighth suggested a skylight with a laser beam projecting skyward.

THE POWER AND PAIN

Several firefighters, looking at the designs for a first time, said they were pleased that at least one plan listed the uniformed rescue workers like firefighters and police separately from the other victims. The Fire Department of New York lost 343 members in the attacks.

"We are encouraged," said retired firefighter John Finucane. "We want future generations who come and see the memorial to know the men and women who gave their lives. Those men and women went up when everyone else was exiting the building. They kept going up."

New York New Visions, a coalition of architects, planners, engineers and artists, many of whom live and work in downtown Manhattan, said it "applauds" the eight designs.

"We recognize the incredible effort ... but realize that the hardest work is still immediately ahead," said Mark Ginsberg, a spokesman for the group.

Jury member Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corp. and former president of Brown University, said the debate over the designs was a necessary part of the memorial process.

"The power and pain of this memorial's public discussion energize and animate this process, and this helps keep this memory alive," he said at a news conference. "To give up, on the other hand, or to grow weary, is to begin to forget."

The memorial is just a small part of the redevelopment of the ruined World Trade Center site. Also in the works are an array of office buildings, a 1,776-foot tall Freedom Tower, a new transportation hub and a reopening scheduled on Sunday of a commuter train that travels under the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey.