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December 19, 2003
After months of strained collaboration
Daniel Libeskind and David Childs, FAIA, revealed their design
for the 1,776-foot “Freedom Tower,” the first, and
tallest, building at the new World Trade Center.
The plan, revealed at Federal Hall in
Lower Manhattan on December 19, is bulkier and less angular
than the the sketch that Libeskind submitted to the Lower
Manhattan Development Corporation last winter.
The largely glass tower adheres to the
asymmetrical street grid, torquing upward to the top of its
office component, at 70 stories. It then moves to a light
structure of tension cables, integrated with wind-harvesting
turbines (hoped to provide 20% of the building’s power),
that tops at 1,500 feet, and terminates with an off-center,
276-foot spire meant to evoke the upraised arm of the nearby
Statue of Liberty.
Despite changes to his initial design,
Libeskind said the new form “honors the principles of
the site plan.” Meanwhile, New York Governor George Pataki,
a major player in the architects’ collaboration, said
that Childs’s contribution “adds to the beauty of
the building," while New York City Mayor Bloomberg said
it would "dramatically reclaim the New York City skyline."
In addition to 2.6 million square feet
of office space, the building will include public lobbies,
retail, and transit components at its bottom levels and observation
decks and a restaurant at its top.
The building is designed with a solid
concrete core, with extra support from its top level steel
cables and its twisting, diagonal structural grid. Other safety
elements include extra-strong fireproofing, biological and
chemical filters in it its air supply system, and very wide
stairways.
The tower is expected to break ground
in mid 2004, top out in mid 2006, and be completed by 2008.
Critical response is still forming. Many
have lauded the building's adherence to Libeskind's master
plan, its twisting forms and technical innovations, but Martin
Filler, Architecture Critic of the New Republic, said he found
the building “awkwardly porportioned,” and, ultimately,
a “slicked up developer’s building with some vague
echos of Libeskind’s original plan.”
Sam Lubell
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