WTC Tower One - by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

[JMGarcia]

I wish they had made the cores solid. It would give a more realistic sense of the building.

[Ninjahedge]

This is interesting, the zig-zags will make good framework provided they put some steel horizontals in at story levels (where the boxes are at their corners. You need to keep it all triangles to stay stable.

It will be a very rigid building, provided there are no irregularities in the perimeter framing that might pronate the structure to torsional effects (like gravity twisting or dynamic weakness in the dorsional mode).

Those turbines still look silly. You would think they would be able to come up with a larger, more efficient standards than the classic airplane propeller.

Like maybe the same kinds of fans they have for computer cases (like Turbines...)

[TonyO]

This is from the NY1 article BigMac posted today...some news about the Freedom Tower.

“The important thing is that they collaborated together on the conceptuality of the design,” says Silverstein. “Now it's David's responsibility to actually design the Freedom Tower into a working, buildable building - which he's in the process of doing.”

Good news, could turn out quite different than what we know of it now.

[Gulcrapek]

I doubt it. There'd be more lawsuits and "misinforming the public."

[billyblancoNYC]

Well, Childs wanted 2000ft, not sure who made it "1776." Also, I think Childs will have some sway over Larry, especially if her can get more space for rent income in the tower for not too much more money (seeing as how the insurance isn't paying off quite as well as hoped). I mean, it's a $billion building. Who knows. We'll see. I think Childs knows that the response has been less than enthusiastic. Maybe the wind farms will not be "feasible" or something.

I assume that the design will change, especially if Larry is making statements like this. One can hope.

[NYguy]

The way I see it, it all comes down to how they plan to mark 1,776 ft, the big "theme" and height of the building...

[NYguy]

another felixsalmon.com opinion piece...

May 31, 2004

Libeskind and the Freedom Tower

We can officially assume now, I think, that Daniel Libeskind and the Freedom Tower are barely connected any more, let alone in any kind of one-designed-the-other relationship. My guess is that when all is said and done, the name and the location – at the north-west corner of the World Trade Center site – will be Libeskind; the rest will be David Childs.

In the time since my last WTC update, a number of crucial court decisions have gone against Larry Silverstein, the leasholder of the original towers. They were insured for about $3.5 billion, but Silverstein spent untold millions of dollars in a desperate attempt to get double the amount that the towers were insured for, saying that he should be paid out in full for each of the two attacks. In the end, he failed, and now he simply doesn't have the money to start building the spiral of skyscrapers that Libeskind imagined in his site plan. I'm sure that Normal Foster, Fumihiko Maki and Jean Nouvel – the architects slated to design the other office towers – still have some kind of contract going, but if I were them, I wouldn't be holding my breath.

What that means is that the Freedom Tower is going to be a self-standing landmark for the foreseeable future, much more than a single element in a much larger scheme. There will be lots of interesting stuff going on at ground level, of course, but as far as the skyline is concerned, the Freedom Tower is pretty much the beginning and the end of what's going to rise at the WTC site.

As a consequence, it makes little sense for Childs to compromise his own vision overmuch in the service of a greater unity which might well never happen. (Even if the other office towers do get built, there's no guarantee that their architects will pay any more obeisance to the Libeskind master plan than Childs has done.) So the sloping roof is likely to go, the height of the tower is likely to increase from Libeskind's symbolic 1,776 feet to the CAA's maximum allowable 2,000 feet, and the spire could well be jettisoned entirely.

I haven't seen any new designs which make me say this. But I have seen the news reports, and it's clear that Libeskind and Silverstein are barely on speaking terms any more. Libeskind wants $800,000 for his work on the Freedom Tower; Silverstein has offered $125,000 and clearly has no interest maintaining a good working relationship with the avant-garde architect.

The difference seems to come down, at heart, to the question of whether the Freedom Tower is an integral part of the site plan, on which, there is no doubt, Libeskind has done a lot of work. Silverstein says that it's his building, he's got his own architect, and that insofar as Libeskind did work on the tower as part of the master plan, he was compensated for it out of his $2.25 million fee from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Both the New York Post and Miss Representation are pretty dismissive of Libeskind's claims, which are backed up with no time sheets or other documentation. But I can kind of see where Libeskind is coming from: any officially-designated "collaborating architect" would feel he was owed something substantial from the building he was collaborating on, especially when that building was probably the single most important skyscraper to be built in many decades. Ultimately, however, I imagine that history will treat Libeskind's contributions to the Freedom Tower as even less important than Philip Johnson's contributions to the Seagram Building: Johnson is much more famous for designing the Four Seasons restaurant on the inside than he is for designing the building itself. Maybe Libeskind should angle for the gig as lead architect on the new Windows on the World.

[NoyokA]

As a consequence, it makes little sense for Childs to compromise his own vision overmuch in the service of a greater unity which might well never happen. (Even if the other office towers do get built, there's no guarantee that their architects will pay any more obeisance to the Libeskind master plan than Childs has done.) So the sloping roof is likely to go, the height of the tower is likely to increase from Libeskind's symbolic 1,776 feet to the CAA's maximum allowable 2,000 feet, and the spire could well be jettisoned entirely.

I haven't seen any new designs which make me say this. But I have seen the news reports, and it's clear that Libeskind and Silverstein are barely on speaking terms any more. Libeskind wants $800,000 for his work on the Freedom Tower; Silverstein has offered $125,000 and clearly has no interest maintaining a good working relationship with the avant-garde architect.

Some more encouragement that things are happening behind closed doors, for which I can only hope the best.

[NoyokA]

Maybe Libeskind should angle for the gig as lead architect on the new Windows on the World.

Frankly people are sick and tired of Libeskind's antics.

[JMGarcia]

I really do hope that Childs can save this building, and the Silverstein is willing to spend to allow him to do it, but nothing Childs has ever done has convinced me he can. On the other hand maybe he's due for a breakthrough.

[NoyokA]

Child's designs are consistently raped by their respective developers, its the very reason Child's is a leading New York architect, his udder compliance. With the WTC Child's is gang raped by Silverstein and Libeskind.

A+U is a good series that show some original designs before the devistating hand of zoning, budgets, and developers. Other sources such as monographs and buildingographies of the Bertelsmann Building and One World Wide Plaza offer some more insight. Designs are less a program than are a regime.

The designs of TXSQ Tower and Columbus Center have been raped to an almost embarrasing state.

I'm a defender of David Child's because he's a good architect, however in a large corporation such as SOM there are certain loyalties that must be paid. For the companies sake its the developers interests first and architecture follows a distant second.

JM, in answer to your question Child's is a competant architect.

[ZippyTheChimp]

his udder compliance

If your intent is symbolic sarcasm, it's hilarious.

If not, you may need this.

:P

[JMGarcia]

Child's designs are consistently raped by their respective developers, its the very reason Child's is a leading New York architect, his udder compliance. With the WTC Child's is gang raped by Silverstein and Libeskind.

A+U is a good series that show some original designs before the devistating hand of zoning, budgets, and developers. Other sources such as monographs and buildingographies of the Bertelsmann Building and One World Wide Plaza offer some more insight. Designs are less a program than are a regime.

The designs of TXSQ Tower and Columbus Center have been raped to an almost embarrasing state.

I'm a defender of David Child's because he's a good architect, however in a large corporation such as SOM there are certain loyalties that must be paid. For the companies sake its the developers interests first and architecture follows a distant second.

JM, in answer to your question Child's is a competant architect.

Childs may well be a competent architect, but the fact he has consistently been unable to produce a building showing that talent is what worries me. Also, not my comment about "Sivlerstein allowing him" to fix it.

Compare Childs to Adrian Smith of SOM Chicago. Smith may be an inferior architect (or maybe not) but he gets better buildings built somehow. Perhaps this is Childs' failing, not his architectural creative skills.

[BigMac]

Interesting to note that, like Libeskind, Minoru Yamasaki had virtually no previous skyscraper experience.

[LuPeRcALiO]

Big Mac maybe not supertalls, but by the time he got the WTC commission Yamasaki had built highrises all over the country including Minneapolis, Seattle, and St. Louis, also airports, consulates (including one in Kobe, Japan), pavilions, and a string of campus buildings: "Minoru Yamasaki designed buildings for many universities in the midwest in what is sometimes called a modified International Style. They include the Irwin library at Butler University, Indianapolis; the Conservatory of Music and Concert Hall at Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH; many buildings at Wayne State University, Detroit; and the Medical College of Ohio, Toledo, OH. These buildings were all constructed between 1955 and 1963."