New design for Freedom Tower

[Young Drachma]

I like this new design a heck of a lot more than the old one.

Story

With one eye on terrorism and another on what has already been lost to terrorists, New York officials unveiled a redesigned Freedom Tower today whose height and proportion, centered antenna and cut-away corners, tall lobbies and pinstripe facade evoke - both deliberately and coincidentally - the sky-piercing twins it is meant to replace.

The new design for the 82-story signature building at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan calls for an almost impermeable and impregnable 200-foot concrete and steel pedestal, clad in ornamental metalwork and set at least 65 feet away from Route 9A, the heavily trafficked state highway that runs along the west edge of ground zero.

This enormous pedestal would overlook the Sept. 11 memorial. Above it would be a tapering tower of glass - some panes laminated and several layers thick - with 69 office floors topped by a restaurant, indoor and outdoor observation decks and an antenna within a trellis-like sculpture that would bring the structure's total height to 1,776 feet.

That symbolic height is one of the few elements left intact from the building first envisioned in 2002 by the architect Daniel Libeskind, the site's master planner, and designed in 2003 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Gone are the asymmetrical spire, torqued form, parallelogram floor plan, energy-producing windmills, suspension cables, lacy facade and open-air arcade.

The hurried redesign has pushed the completion date of the Freedom Tower back by one or two years, to 2010. It is unclear what effect it will have on the budget, which has been estimated at $1.5 billion, since the extra security measures will add to costs, while the overall simplification of the structure may cut down on time and money.

The latest transformation was driven by the New York Police Department's insistence that the building be more resistant to attack, particularly from car and truck bombs. It was also intended to preserve as much as possible of the foundation design that had already consumed months of work. This includes threading the tower's underground columns among the looping outbound tracks of the World Trade Center PATH station.

Given those requirements, and the goal of maintaining the building's overall 2.6 million square foot floor area, the redesigned Freedom Tower almost naturally assumed some dimensions of the original twin towers, said David M. Childs of Skidmore, the building's chief architect.

Though uncanny, it was not an unwelcome turn, he said. In fact, adjustments and refinements have been made to underscore the similarities. For example, the altitude of the floor of the rooftop observation deck would be set at 1,362 feet, the height of 2 World Trade Center. The rooftop parapet would reach 1,368 feet, the height of No. 1.

[Young Drachma]

I like this design a lot more.

[HomerJSimpson]

I like it. Looks good.

[sachmo71]

The top is unnecessarily long. They just want to make people feel inadequate.

[CraigSca]

This looks good. It'll be nice to see the skyline with a giant tower once again.

[st.cronin]

I wish Bloomberg's idea had been taken more seriously; use the land for schools and parks.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

I wish Bloomberg's idea had been taken more seriously; use the land for schools and parks.

In that area? No way. That's a really, really prime area of real estate. Plus, anyone who is used to seeing the WTC when you drive to Manhattan or are trolling downtown, there just has to be a building there.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

This looks good. It'll be nice to see the skyline with a giant tower once again.

Agreed.

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

In that area? No way. That's a really, really prime area of real estate. Plus, anyone who is used to seeing the WTC when you drive to Manhattan or are trolling downtown, there just has to be a building there.

It could have been an incredibly beautiful way to honor the dead, but, because people think like you do, it was never an option.

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

It could have been an incredibly beautiful way to honor the dead, but, because people think like you do, it was never an option.

They have to pay for it somehow. Honor only goes so far.

[moriarty]

I like it, but who in their right mind is going to lease out the top level floors based on past history. No way you'd get me to work above say floor 40.

[sterlingice]

Agreed- this looks nice for a redesign. And, guys, stop trying to tell us how indistructable this building is in what seems to be telling people how it can't ever be knocked down. I bet if someone crashed a plane into it, it still falls over- we just have to make sure no more planes go crashing into it.

EDIT:

That symbolic height is one of the few elements left intact from the building first envisioned in 2002 by the architect Daniel Libeskind, the site's master planner, and designed in 2003 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Gone are the asymmetrical spire, torqued form, parallelogram floor plan, energy-producing windmills, suspension cables, lacy facade and open-air arcade.

You know the original architect is just screaming about how they ruined his master work, too.

SI

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

It could have been an incredibly beautiful way to honor the dead, but, because people think like you do, it was never an option.

It's a cool idea, but, really, it's not realistic in a monetary sense.

SI

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

It looks expensive.

[rkmsuf]

Originally Posted by CHEMICAL SOLDIER

It looks expensive.

Don't worry about it. It's all done with ball bearings which don't cost that much.

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

It's a cool idea, but, really, it's not realistic in a monetary sense.

SI

The mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg, thought it was realistic.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

The mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg, thought it was realistic.

I'll ignore the hideous "you didn't know the mayor of New York's name when I invoked it earlier in the thread" assumption and instead point out that I'm sure everything the mayor does has no political motivation behind it and is purely in the best interests of the people and city.

SI

[rkmsuf]

Do you think his friends call him "Mike" Bloomberg and not Michael?

How about Jordan and Jackson...do friends call them "Mike"?

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

I'll ignore the hideous "you didn't know the mayor of New York's name when I invoked it earlier in the thread" assumption and instead point out that I'm sure everything the mayor does has no political motivation behind it and is purely in the best interests of the people and city.

SI

The phrasing was intead to point out out that the man who suggested the idea understands fiscal matters more than most of us on the board.

[moriarty]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

The phrasing was intead to point out out that the man who suggested the idea understands fiscal matters more than most of us on the board.

If he did make the suggestion to use it for schools and parks, I'm sure it was purely for political reasons. Bloomberg and anyone else with half a mind in NYC knows they need the property taxes (not to mention income and sales taxes - assuming they replace the underground mall) badly.

[rkmsuf]

Didn't Bloomberg suggest that all the citizens of New York City wear nametags in order to make it a friendlier place?

[KevinNU7]

I like this design much better

[RendeR]

Bring back Rudi, Bloomberg is an idiot.

[Wolfpack]

If the top level height is the same as the old WTC (unless the observation deck is a few floors down like it is in the Sears Tower), that's going to be one hella-tall antenna at a bit over 400 feet. At one time the Sears Tower had a 350-foot antenna, but I'm not sure anymore who's got the tallest one now.

Theoretically it also means the new WTC is not going to be the tallest building in the world since antennas don't usually count in such things.

[Desnudo]

Originally Posted by rkmsuf

Didn't Bloomberg suggest that all the citizens of New York City wear nametags in order to make it a friendlier place?

Hi rkmsuf!

[kingfc22]

That building is huge! Looks very nice though.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

You know the original architect is just screaming about how they ruined his master work, too.

SI

Good thing. The previous design was a colossal fuckin' eye-sore. Anyone who is called an "architect's architect" should not be allowed to have anything built. And don't get me started on this "function follows form" shit that is producing some of the ugliest buildings ever built by humans.

[BigJohn&TheLions]

Looks better. But it looks lonely... Needs a second tower.

So basically what we have learned here is that a "winning" design can be trashed and redone many times, removing every element of the design that played a great part in "winning" the design contest in the first place. This can be done without question, as long as the word "Freedom" is in the name and the height is 1776. To say anthing against this, or the many future redesigns must be unamerican...

I work about two blocks away from the site. Build them back, but better than before. Restore the "Twin Towers" aspect, and in turn the skyline we all now greatly miss. And scrap the plans for a Civil Rights/Slavery/MLK museum incorporated into the memorial. (Personally, I'd like to see fountains incorporated into the memorial on the "footprints" of the towers that shoot 4 story strams of water into the sky, somewhat to resemble the towers from the ground. Also, the resulting mist would cool the area down greatly in the summer!

[cthomer5000]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

It could have been an incredibly beautiful way to honor the dead, but, because people think like you do, it was never an option.

Dude, you have NO idea how valuable a piece of real estate we're talking about. Get real, build a building, and move on.

[cthomer5000]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

The mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg, thought it was realistic.

I'm sure he said as much publicly while chuckling and saying "no fucking way" behind closed doors. It's easy to say stuff like that in public when you know it will make you sound good and that it has NOOOO chance of actually happening.