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New Renderings Reveal A Not-Awful Two World Trade Center
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jun 9, 2015
Modified Jun 9, 2015
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jun 9, 2015
Modified Jun 9, 2015
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If you're not bludgeoning the Manhattan skyline with a Bluetooth lawn dart, you're already way ahead of 1 WTC. In this respect, the new design for Two World Trade Center, the final WTC tower, is a success.
Wired got the exclusive on Bjarke Ingels' 80-story, 1,340 foot stacked-box plan (the tower will be 30 feet shorter than 1 WTC, without the spire).
“The World Trade Center has this inherent dilemma, that in the public eye it’s a public work,” the starchitect told the magazine. “But in fact, what’s going to come up there has to happen on traditional market terms. It is not a cultural palace or a museum or a public building. It’s going to be an office building where people are going to have to work and pay rent. So in that sense, probably more than anything we’ve done, it’s really about turning practicalities into poetry.”
So Ingels's solution was to make it look "very straightlaced" and traditional from the vantage point of the 9/11 Memorial, and show off the stepped boxes and the 38,000 square feet of outdoor space when you approach it from Tribeca. Blackberry in the front, Blackberry with a cracked screen from behind.
The New 2 World Trade Center from Silverstein Properties on Vimeo.
How was Ingels able to dump the dumpy Norman Foster design and tame The Establishment's affinity for glass phalluses?
Rupert Murdoch's son decreed it so.
“The first thing James said to me is he didn’t want to build a tower,” Ingels says, referring to James Murdoch, who was looking for a new home for News Corp and 20th Century Fox when their Midtown lease expires in 2020.
News Corp and Fox's 5,000 employees will occupy the lower half of the building, and Larry Silverstein will lease the rest to anyone who can afford it.
"By the 20th anniversary of September 11, Fox News should be broadcasting from studios that will look out onto the sinuous 'oculus' of Calatrava’s train station," the article reads. Sounds about right.
Tagged
larry silverstein
Two World Trade Center
wtc
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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