One other thing it looks like they did was beef up the small diagonal members on either side of the original cross bracing. Before this redesign they were getting progressively thinner and less noticeable, and now they are very prominent in the design again.
Also the one thing that really irks me is the location now of the four spires. Because the cross bracing is gone they've actually moved the spires, and now they may really change the way the top of this tower looks, and probably not for the better.
Might be a minority opinion, but I don;t think the building looks much worse. But then again, I thought the second iteration was looking pretty bland already with the thinned out cross beams - and the blank north/south faces. At least they beefed up the remaining diagonal pieces - the n/s facades might actually look better in this iteration.
For me, #1 and #2 were always the stars of the site. I'll keep my fingers crossed that they end up building #2 without screwing the design up.
Seems like there is going to be a vicious wind tunnel between towers 3 and 4. Those puppies are right up on each other.
Well if you want one of the WTC buildings to break up the monotany, I'm sure the PAC will do that. Personally I think the designs of the 4 office towers should be consistent. Of course, the new buildings will not be TWINS (like the Twin Towers), but they will be a lot like the World Financial Center. Even though the four main WFC buildings are of varying heights and have slightly different geometry, their external appearance (meaning, the light brown masonry with square windows throughout) is exactly the same in all four buildings. Now, imagine if one of the four WFC buildings had extravagent external columns at all sorts of varying angles. Although the building might look nice on its own merits, as part of a complex, it would ruin the architectual consistency of the entire complex. I would even argue that the remaining external columns on WTC3 at the corners should go, but I guess this is a decent middle ground.Originally Posted by antinimby
At least the design change will help the building finally get built.
Last edited by RKOwens44; June 28th, 2011 at 03:35 PM.
The WFC buildings have a common unifying theme. Just like Rockefeller Center.
I don't see any key element that unifies the four WFC buildings (or five including 7WTC). It's just their placement around the memorial, and the height spiral. Other than that, they're stand alone buildings.
Architecturally, just lots and lots of reflective glass.
Infrastructurally (I think I made up that word), they're extremely interconnected. The retail component, transit hall, etc... very similar to the programatic elements of the original WTC but brought up to today's standards of urban planning. Somewhere in that process, the idea of creating a unifying theme for the towers was either lost, forgotten, or intentionally left out.
I don't think it is a bad thing that they not be unified in appearance. Shorter buildings like the WFC succeeded with that especially in subservience to the Twins, and the Twins worked as there were only two of them. I think having 5 of the tallest towers in Manhattan be visually connected in one clump would have been too much.
I don't even think the WFC is anything to write home about.
Is the WFC really anything special? Does it get anyone excited? Does anyone even look at them anymore?
I've always liked them, they were a great compliment to the original WTC. In my opinion a scale of 1-10, maybe somewhere around a 6. They're actually pretty large... put them in many other cities and they'd be giants.
There's a quiet elegance to WFC.
I would disagree. There is a unifying architectual theme to them, and that theme is of a "batch of crystals" (I guess is one way to describe it). Think back to the original designs for the Freedom Tower and its surrounding buildings, back when it REALLY looked like a batch of crystals.
The designs were changed, of course, to make the buildings more practical, but I believe they've still retained that overall theme of being like diamonds/crystals. 1WTC resembles an upside down and elongated diamond, 2WTC has the four diamonds at its top, and even 3WTC and 4WTC in a way look like uniquely shaped quarts or crystals. Also their finishing touch for the crystal theme is the completely glass facades, which give the buildings a shiny crystal-like appearance.
WTC3, while it still would have been mostly glass, would have had these huge external columns which would have been completely out of place.
Thanks for posting that: it does look like a batch of crystals - it would be fine if the entire site was built exactly like that graphic you posted.
I do, however, like how the WTC is turning out, there is a 'simple elegance' to the as-built project - and I do see a certain uniformity or theme. The removal of the X cross beams has - unintentionally - made tower three more contextual. The great thing about art/architecture is we can all go away with our own 'take' in the matter and "nobody" is necessarily wrong.
Last edited by infoshare; June 29th, 2011 at 07:07 PM.
LOL.
Those "batch of crystals" were just placeholder, never intended to be anything else.
Libeskind took them seriously. He apparently through quite the fit (READ: called his lawyer) when it became obvious he wasn't going to design even one of the final buildings.
Thank God Silverstein stuck to his guns on that one. Libeskind buildings are godawful.
This rendering was the backdrop of a small concert in the plaza fronting of 7 wtc.
larger:http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5314/...3217fdc1_b.jpg
Tower 3 looks a bit dinky and more delicate than its peers. Also, not sure if it's just a correction from the initial rendering or an actual height increase, but tower's 2 and 4 are slightly taller.
Last edited by Derek2k3; July 2nd, 2011 at 12:05 AM.
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