New designs by one of the world’s most renowned architects are failing to win over neighborhood critics of the most ambitious development project planned for Brooklyn in decades.

Architect Frank Gehry released his soaring designs yesterday for the Atlantic Yards project, developer Bruce Ratner’s $3.5 billion plan to build a basketball arena and 16 mostly residential towers in Prospect Heights. Some of the development would be built over the Vanderbilt rail yards and some on land condemned using eminent domain.

In a presentation for the press, Mr. Gehry said the project is designed to be in harmony with the “the body language of Brooklyn.” Compared with previously published images, the renderings released yesterday seem to be a more toned-down version of Mr. Gehry’s signature style – the bold design embodied in his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Mr. Gehry said the Brooklyn plans now include smaller buildings in the areas where the project would intersect with the surrounding low-rise residential neighborhood. The centerpiece of the site, a 620-foot-tall residential tower, which Mr. Gehry calls “Miss Brooklyn,” would be the tallest structure in the borough.

A landscape designer, Laurie Olin, said the plan would include what would be “the largest stoop in Brooklyn” – in front of the planned arena that would house the Nets.

Yesterday, opponents of the project said the revised design is still “way too big” and remains out of context with the area. They said the new renderings mask the true size and scale of the project.

Critics of the plan, who include residents of the surrounding neighborhoods, have led an active campaign, staging marches, assembling a star-studded advisory board, and filing a lawsuit that failed to stop demolition planned on part of the site. Yesterday, they protested outside the press conference.

In a statement, the spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, Daniel Goldstein, said the new designs do not “change the fact that the proposal abuses eminent domain, spends at least $1.6 billion in taxpayer dollars, creates a traffic nightmare at Atlantic and Flatbush, is a security risk, or that this project is a land grab by a wealthy sports baron developer.”

Supporters of the plan, who include Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki, have said the plan will create jobs and housing and revitalize the area.

As part of the approval process, a state development corporation is now conducting an environmental review of the project, which will be incorporated in a draft environmental impact statement. The developer hopes to have the arena built in time for the 2009-10 basketball season.