Quote:
Originally Posted by McBane
But isn't that THE definition of iconic? The Twin Towers are/were iconic but architecturally, they were these awful tall boxes. I'm not going to argue the merits of 1WTC, but its historic background, height, location, and all the press surrounding it make it a fairly widely known building.
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I don't think the new version is an "icon" because of the iconic status of the previous Twin Towers, no.
I certainly wouldn't argue that it's well known... and it would be hard for any building to be a standout on that site, given the tragic history and status of the original of course. Still, the effort to build a standout was half-hearted (and we see the results of that with a completely unfinished-looking top in an era in which a skyscraper's crown is again its prominent defining point... as it was in the golden age of NYC towers 1920s-1930s) and therefore the lukewarm response.
The original WTC was iconic because there were
two gigantic towers that became the world's tallest buildings... they may have been "awful tall boxes", but again, there were two of them... and that was the first time the world had seen towers built of that magnitude.