WTC Tower One - by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

**NYguy** · July 20th, 2004, 07:12 PM

Originally Posted by RandySavage

We still have to wait eight to ten months until actual construction of the Freedom Tower foundation begins, according to a recent article posted here.

They may have begun "stabilizing the slurry wall," but, if so, I couldn't tell when I walked past yesterday.

No, its about eight to ten months before we see any steel rising. In the next couple of months, we should see the dismantling of the garage, followed by more Freedom Tower work...

Deep within the smoke-blackened ruins of an underground parking garage, 30 workers are installing tendonlike bundles of steel cable, called tiebacks, to anchor the concrete perimeter foundation wall to bedrock. This will permit the demolition in coming months of the last major structural vestige of the old World Trade Center..............

"We've already done the borings for the foundation," he said. "The tiebacks are going in now. Once the tiebacks are complete, the slabs will come down. And, of course, the footings will be going in as well, a number of footings that hold the whole, massive Freedom Tower.

Demolition of the garage will cost about $10 million. "It has to be done very meticulously," Mr. Seymour said. "That's why it's important to begin right away."......................

Another preliminary step to construction is the pouring of dozens of concrete footings on which the tower columns will stand. That should begin in the fall.

**krulltime** · July 21st, 2004, 11:51 AM

WTC designer a shakedown artist - builder

BY MAGGIE HABERMAN
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Originally published on July 21, 2004

Architect Daniel Libeskind held out "approval" on the Freedom Tower design in an attempted $800,000 shakedown, twin towers leaseholder Larry Silverstein charged in court papers yesterday.

The salvo was Silverstein's response to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court last week by Libeskind, who claims the developer cheated him out of money he was owed for work on the planned tower.

But in an affidavit, Silverstein executive Janno Lieber said Libeskind's main contribution was devising the overall plan for the World Trade Center site, for which he was paid by public agencies.

The work on the tower design was largely done by Silverstein's architects, Lieber said, because Libeskind didn't have the right expertise.

Libeskind and Silverstein architect David Childs were forced into a tense collaboration over the tower design.

"During our negotiations, [Studio Daniel Libeskind] representatives, on various occasions, attempted to justify this extra fee as payment for the 'brilliant' idea of the Freedom Tower - an idea for which SDL has already been paid - or as compensation for Libeskind's willingness to give the tower his political 'seal of approval,'" Lieber said.

Libeskind lawyer Ed Hayes said the situation was the opposite.

"Libeskind said to [Silverstein], 'Look, you've agreed to follow the master plan, now you have to do it,'" Hayes said. "Really, Silverstein was looking to bribe Libeskind into going along with his plan, and when [Libeskind] refused, Silverstein wouldn't pay him."

All contents © 2004 Daily News, L.P.

**LuPeRcALiO** · July 21st, 2004, 03:06 PM

Judge orders mediation in Libeskind's lawsuit over WTC fees

By SAMUEL MAULL
Associated Press Writer
July 21, 2004, 2:03 PM EDT

NEW YORK -- A judge ordered mediation Wednesday in the fee dispute between World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein and site planner Daniel Libeskind, who has filed a lawsuit claiming Silverstein owes him more than $843,000.

State Supreme Court Justice Karla Moskowitz issued the order at the request of Silverstein's lawyer, Stephen Hoffman, and set a schedule for the parties' exchange of papers and information. The judge told both sides to return to court Oct. 14.

John Lieber, another of Silverstein's lawyers, said "we're thrilled" Moskowitz ordered the mediation. He said the dispute did not belong in court or the newspapers, and a neutral, third party would likely recommend a fair settlement.

Edward W. Hayes, Libeskind's lawyer, had opposed mediation, saying he did not believe it would be "fruitful." He had said he was ready for trial.

Libeskind, who designed the master plan for rebuilding the 16-acre site, sued Silverstein on July 13, saying the developer had withheld his proper fee as punishment for thwarting Silverstein's plans to include more rental space in the design.

Libeskind argued that the fee for concept and design of a major project such as the Freedom Tower is usually a percentage of the architectural fee, which is a percentage of the construction costs.

Because Silverstein has refused to say what he is paying the architect, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Libeskind said he had to guess what his fee should be. Based on the project's estimated cost of $1.5 billion, he said his fee should be $843,750.

Lieber, the Silverstein lawyer, said the developer was paying Libeskind based on time spent working on the project, not based on the project's cost. He said the dispute arose because Libeskind did not keep time sheets.

Lieber said the sides had been trying to settle when Libeskind filed his court papers. He said only "a few hundred thousand dollars" separated them, and he estimated that Libeskind's legal fees would probably consume that amount.

Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press

**krulltime** · July 22nd, 2004, 10:50 AM

WTC tower powers go to mediation

By Barbara Ross and Owen Moritz
Originally published on July 22, 2004

A judge yesterday ordered World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein and disgruntled architect Daniel Libeskind to submit their $800,000 fee dispute to mediation.

At the same time Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Karla Moskowitz told the parties to begin discovery in case mediation fails to resolve their bitter dispute over the Freedom Tower design.

"We're thrilled," said Silverstein's attorney, John Lieber. "This is a dispute that doesn't belong in the courts." But Libeskind's lawyer, Ed Hayes, said his client did not believe mediation would be "fruitful" and was ready for trial.

Libeskind, who designed the master plan for rebuilding the 16-acre twin towers site, sued Silverstein last week, claiming the developer had withheld his proper fee. Silverstein countered that Libeskind's fees amount to a shakedown.

All contents © 2004 Daily News, L.P.

**krulltime** · July 22nd, 2004, 11:03 AM

"We're thrilled," said Silverstein's attorney, John Lieber. "This is a dispute that doesn't belong in the courts." But Libeskind's lawyer, Ed Hayes, said his client did not believe mediation would be "fruitful" and was ready for trial.

This is giving me a headache... :x

**TonyO** · July 22nd, 2004, 11:15 AM

Originally Posted by krulltime

"We're thrilled," said Silverstein's attorney, John Lieber. "This is a dispute that doesn't belong in the courts." But Libeskind's lawyer, Ed Hayes, said his client did not believe mediation would be "fruitful" and was ready for trial.

This is giving me a headache... :x

Just think, this is only lawsuit #1.

**Johnnyboy** · July 27th, 2004, 12:47 PM

Nothing new reguarding this? what are they doing now on the construction site

**thirduncle** · August 1st, 2004, 06:49 AM

Frank Lloyd Wright's Rogers Lacy Hotel.

See anything familiar?

Childs has parallelogram fever, but just can't go ALL the way and appropriate Wright the way Calatrava does in humble homage.

Note the parallelogram shaped windows. Now that's going ALL the way! O Daddy Frank! The American original!

**TonyO** · August 5th, 2004, 12:03 AM

found this posted on SSP by coolczech...very current and very interesting.

Libeskind on the FT, the Twins, Life, and Everything

'You've got to have faith'

What with launching a lawsuit against the developer of the Ground Zero site and learning that the V&A's Spiral Gallery may never get built, you might think Daniel Libeskind has had a tough fortnight. Not so, he tells Jonathan Glancey

Jonathan Glancey
Wednesday August 4, 2004

The Guardian

Daniel Libeskind is in his studio in Zurich, having flown in from New York for a day and night. He is unsure what day it is, and when we pop back to his office after a coffee, he forgets what floor his studio is on. It's a bit like being on screen with Woody Allen.
Aside from the Zurich studio, Libeskind has offices in New York and Hong Kong. His career is clearly on some global trajectory. As well as the master-planning of Ground Zero in New York, he has new commissions for important building projects in Milan, Seoul and Hong Kong. He is busy building in Denver, San Francisco, Bern and Tel Aviv. He has just completed a boat-like and uncharacteristically low-profile Jewish Museum in Copenhagen. In the Zurich studio, he shows me a model of a military museum planned for the centre of born-again Dresden. We get to talk (Libeskind in his inimitable thousand-words-a-minute way) in-between client meetings.

Libeskind's ability to concentrate intensely on one project for the time needed before switching to the next with equal enthusiasm is remarkable. Here is a successful architect firing on all cylinders, and very much on form.

Not that you would have gleaned this from newspapers over the past fortnight. Instead, you will have read that the government turned down a funding application from the Victoria and Albert Museum to build his Spiral Gallery, dedicated to contemporary design. And you will have learned that there is trouble in New York, too. The architect's design for the 1,776ft Freedom Tower at Ground Zero has been taken over by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), successful commercial architects. Now Studio Libeskind is suing the developer, Larry Silverstein. Is the sky-rocketing Libeskind falling to earth, his dramatic, zig-zag designs in tow? "You've got to have faith," he says. "And patience, too. Lots of it.

"When you're a kid with artistic yearnings brought up in the Bronx, you don't get fed up too easily. It took 10 years to build the Jewish Museum in Berlin [his first building; overall, a critical success]. Nearly everybody said it would never happen. It was too crazy, too unrealistic. But it did happen. And now we've been asked to build an extension to the museum because the number of visitors is growing each year.

"The Spiral Gallery may happen, too. It is not dependent on government funding. The museum has raised many millions of pounds, and a benefactor might still come its way. We've revised the project to bring it up to date. There is a possibility it will happen, and there is the possibility it might not, but you have to believe in what might be. I'm not Candide, nor Dr Pangloss, but we know that faith moves mountains."

And raises Manhattan towers? Libeskind proves keen to emphasise the positive here, too. "SOM has taken over the design of the Freedom Tower, but we're in charge of the overall masterplan for Ground Zero. This includes the tower, but far more besides. We're dealing, simultaneously, with the commissioning and construction of 10 million sq ft of offices, the 9/11 memorial, entire new streets, a new park, seven storeys of infrastructure below ground, transportation, security ... It's like running a marathon several times over. I don't get to sleep when I'm in New York. Really. I'm living on adrenaline." He must be. It's getting on for two o'clock and he clearly hasn't had a chance to even think about lunch.

"This is a huge project," he continues, "the rebirth, effectively, of Lower Manhattan. It involves so many players and will take several years to complete. We're in this for the long run. Our office is on Rector Street with a great view of Ground Zero, Federal Hall, the Hudson and the Statue of Liberty. Every time I look out of the window, I'm reminded of what I'm doing."

So what is the problem between Libeskind and Silverstein, the Mr Big of New York's property world and lessee, from the Port Authority, of the World Trade Centre site? "It's a straightforward legal issue," says Libeskind. "Larry wanted us to reposition the tower. We wouldn't, and won't. He's been holding back our fees. We want to get paid. And that's it. It'll get solved and we'll carry on with planning Ground Zero."

Planning, but not building. Libeskind admits: "It's been hard to hand over the working design of Freedom Tower to another architect - although we're still a part of the team, and so is Larry. And, yes, I love the process of building. But maybe it's good for architects to have their egos kept in check once in a while. Anyway, we're building so much around the world, I can hardly complain."

New York, though, is a very special case, and place, for Libeskind. This is where he came, by ship, aged 13, with his family from Lodz in Poland in 1959. The sight, and promises, of the Statue of Liberty, the experience of immigration procedures on Ellis Island, and the sheer drama of the anyone-can-make-it-here city, made indelible impressions on the budding architect. He is an American citizen, and proud of it. His twisting design for the Freedom Tower is a play on the stance of the nearby Statue of Liberty. He finds nothing corny in designing a building 1,776ft tall, nor in the decision to lay the foundation stone on July 4.

"Right now, the rest of the world confuses American notions of patriotism and nationhood with the actions of a specific administration," he argues. "But the US is a democracy, and when a government is voted out, these humanist notions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness continue."

Libeskind still recalls the construction of the World Trade Centre in the late 1960s and early 1970s; at the time he was a student at the Cooper Union school of architecture in New York. "I remember vividly the huge holes in the ground excavated for their foundations. Yamasaki's towers were exciting in terms of their sheer scale and daring, but they were never my favourite buildings. Most people only really expressed a fondness for them after their destruction. I found them pretty frightening, and the whole area around them a case of the classic windswept plaza.

"Now, for the worst of reasons, we have a chance to make this area really special - and this is happening even before any of us gets to build. There are more people living in Lower Manhattan now than before the terrorist attacks. That's faith for you. There's such a strong spirit here."

So strong, in fact, that everyone seemed to have a view on how to redevelop the site. One difficulty for the architect has been the number of people who have a say in the redevelopment - "everyone from federal, state and city governments to those who live and work here. Remember," he says, "it was the people of New York who rejected the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's plan for the site. They said we want something incredible, not just more real estate."

And of course, fascination with the site wasn't limited to the US. Libeskind points out that in the final two weeks of the competition to find a master-planner for Ground Zero, the official website had eight million hits. "The level of global interest was amazing. But the press reported the story in a way that was all about the egos of duelling architects. And we were all caught up in the act. We had to address huge audiences through the media and on public stages. The press were writing about our clothes, our haircuts and glasses. It was nerve-wracking.

"Perhaps we were over-sensitive to criticism and maybe everyone got a little too hot under the collar. Now it has settled down. We have some great architects collaborating with us today, like Santiago Calatrava, who's designing the new subway station and interchange. You'll be able to see right up from the platforms several stories below pavement level to the 9/11 memorial, to the 70-storey Freedom Tower and to the sky above."

The more Libeskind talks, the more keen he seems to deflect attention from the Freedom Tower. "The foreign press seems obsessed with the Freedom Tower, as if it was the only thing going on here. In fact, we're trying to keep a huge juggling act in balance, with the tower as just one of the many balls in play. There will be several new cultural buildings here; sure, it would be great if we could design one of them. I remain optimistic.

"I'm also positive we'll end up with a part of New York that is very different to, for example, the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. That was crazy. Really good architects, like Renzo Piano, José Rafael Moneo and Arata Isozaki, were working there, yet you ended up with a cultural and commercial dead-end. The plan for Lower Manhattan is very different; it's very much a part of the old city, a new and exciting part, but it will have the spirit of New York written all over it.

"In the process," Libeskind concludes as the Dresden party arrives, "you have to be prepared to be beaten up a little. But, this shouldn't shake your faith. And, even then, you can always punch back."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

**BrooklynRider** · August 5th, 2004, 10:00 AM

I'm at the point that when I see an interview or statements from Liebskind, I scroll on past. Nothing he says interests me. He has proven to be as hollow as his master plan.

**Jasonik** · August 5th, 2004, 10:21 AM

Funny, me too.

**Johnnyboy** · August 13th, 2004, 09:20 AM

has anyone seen any improvement or change on the freedom tower site?

**NoyokA** · August 14th, 2004, 10:46 AM

Reason #1 why the lattice and spire need to be redesigned is that it has become the chief aspect of the building’s design. The press, the process, the populous, our attention is draw to the lattice and whether or not its a symbolic gesture or for design reasons, or energy purposes; it’s the disintegration of the tower into it’s top that has become most important. For something as important, that has captured the attention of an observing world, it must out of necessity be redesigned and made appropriate for the position it has assumed.

**Zoe** · August 14th, 2004, 11:05 AM

They just started demolition on the remaining parking garage decks and are setting up the staging area surrounding the building. It also looks like they are trying to finish the fence and gate area next to the post office on Church.