NEW YORK | One World Trade Center | 1,787' Pinnacle / 1,373' Roof | 108 FLOORS

[TBone7281]

Originally Posted by The Jerk

Christine's # (212) 788-7210

Call and leave a message over and over.

Yes, harassment is definitely the best way to get your point across.

[Tectonic]

Can't they use a simple white enclosure at least, like the ones on the Willis Tower. You can see they tried to 'clean' those up as best as possible.

[NYguy]

hey_im_dan





deshaunicus

[CoolCzech]

Originally Posted by 599GTO

This just looks nasty.

Ugh.

Remember how the whole point of the public design competition, that took years and years, was to ensure that what was created was not motivated merely by greed?

JEEBUS CHRIST ON A POGO STICK

[Roadcruiser1]

The whole World Trade Center site is now a tragedy. The entire project is just one big mess, and the site will be too. First of all the security measures that will be placed will be insane. That already will push away the street life since cars will not be able to drive into the site much leaving the streets empty. Pedestrians walking around the site and working the building will be monitored 24/7 which is just terrible. I mean you can always place security measures, but that is just way too much security to be considered normal. The second change that went wrong is the restaurant. What do you mean it's going to be unprofitable? I rather eat in a restaurant up in the sky than anywhere else. The third change is the base. Even though it might look more like the Twin Towers former base after looking at farther pictures it does not fit in with the design at all. It's completely covered in concrete for security measures which I also deem parnoid and stupid resulting in a loss of useable floor space. The third and final change is the mast which is now stripped to nothing but bare bones. I mean what the hell? This site is a complete mess, and someone has to come and clean it up and talk the Port Authority and Durst straight one more time. This is the World Trade Center. It's not the World Security Center, not the World Ugly Center, it is the WORLD TRADE CENTER! Get it right Durst and Port Authority or don't get involved and let the people do it.

Sincerely,
Someone who has been pushed beyond his anger limit.

[CarlosV]

perfect day in Gotham....




DSC_0490 copy by Ceva321, on Flickr

[chris123678]

Originally Posted by Roadcruiser1

The whole World Trade Center site is now a tragedy. The entire project is just one big mess, and the site will be too. First of all the security measures that will be placed will be insane. That already will push away the street life since cars will not be able to drive into the site much leaving the streets empty. Pedestrians walking around the site and working the building will be monitored 24/7 which is just terrible. I mean you can always place security measures, but that is just way too much security to be considered normal. The second change that went wrong is the restaurant. What do you mean it's going to be unprofitable? I rather eat in a restaurant up in the sky than anywhere else. The third change is the base. Even though it might look more like the Twin Towers former base after looking at farther pictures it does not fit in with the design at all. It's completely covered in concrete for security measures which I also deem parnoid and stupid resulting in a loss of useable floor space. The third and final change is the mast which is now stripped to nothing but bare bones. I mean what the hell? This site is a complete mess, and someone has to come and clean it up and talk the Port Authority and Durst straight one more time. This is the World Trade Center. It's not the World Security Center, not the World Ugly Center, it is the WORLD TRADE CENTER! Get it right Durst and Port Authority or don't get involved and let the people do it.

Sincerely,
Someone who has been pushed beyond his anger limit.

. The base glass was scrapped because the prism weren't safe if the shattered off the base.

[Cataclaw]

Originally Posted by Roadcruiser1

The whole World Trade Center site is now a tragedy. The entire project is just one big mess, and the site will be too. First of all the security measures that will be placed will be insane. That already will push away the street life since cars will not be able to drive into the site much leaving the streets empty. Pedestrians walking around the site and working the building will be monitored 24/7 which is just terrible. I mean you can always place security measures, but that is just way too much security to be considered normal. The second change that went wrong is the restaurant. What do you mean it's going to be unprofitable? I rather eat in a restaurant up in the sky than anywhere else. The third change is the base. Even though it might look more like the Twin Towers former base after looking at farther pictures it does not fit in with the design at all. It's completely covered in concrete for security measures which I also deem parnoid and stupid resulting in a loss of useable floor space. The third and final change is the mast which is now stripped to nothing but bare bones. I mean what the hell? This site is a complete mess, and someone has to come and clean it up and talk the Port Authority and Durst straight one more time. This is the World Trade Center. It's not the World Security Center, not the World Ugly Center, it is the WORLD TRADE CENTER! Get it right Durst and Port Authority or don't get involved and let the people do it.

Sincerely,
Someone who has been pushed beyond his anger limit.

I lurk this thread daily but seldom post. Time to post. I think you're overreacting.

1. Reducing/restricting automobiles is a good thing that will make life safer and easier for pedestrians, cyclists and transit users (who will make up 98% of the volume anyway). Urban planners (and other experts who have been studying transportation for decades) are increasingly moving cities around the world away from automobile dependency for a reason! Fewer cars is a good thing. It will improve street life, not the other way around!

2. The level of site security and pedestrian surveillance : we're not there yet. The site isn't even open/finished yet. When everything is said and done, if there is oppressive airport-like security, then we'll talk. I strongly doubt we'll get to anywhere near what you're proposing.

3. The spire is indeed a loss, I won't argue with that, but I think the spire issue should be kept in perspective. From an urban perspective, what matters most in any development is the street level. What happens 100 floors in the sky is of little importance to quality of life. Again, I like the spire and I hope they make it, but if we're discussing urban planning and quality of the street-level environment, the spire is irrelevant.

4. The base of WTC 1 is concrete and results in a loss of floor space? Really? In the grand scheme of the overall floor space of the whole site, we're talking what, 1%? If that? Given what occurred a decade ago on the site, a sturdy base is a sensible consideration. As for how it looks, can we please wait until everything is 100% finished before bashing it?

I think the WTC site, overall, is a well-designed urban space. It's pedestrian oriented, it features transit prominently, it has great public spaces, etc. As for the buildings themselves, they will be landmarks in New York for generations to come.

[Totojuice]

Originally Posted by Zapatan

Horrible, just horrible, hopefully something will be done because I will never grow to be not-disgusted by this.

The communications rings are gone too, what the hell is going on?

Looks like the sword from a bad 80's sci-fi flick.

[Totojuice]

Originally Posted by nickguar

...But we all, I think, should take a step back and place less emotional emphasis on this specific site.

Sorry Nick, but for those of us who were there it's impossible to separate emotion from this site. It means that much. And that's why you're seeing such a visceral reaction from most people on this board.

[nickguar]

Originally Posted by Totojuice

Sorry Nick, but for those of us who were there it's impossible to separate emotion from this site. It means that much. And that's why you're seeing such a visceral reaction from most people on this board.

I understand. I'm in NJ, right across the river. So the attack felt like it was against me personally, not just as an American but as an extended New Yorker. My point was simply, they have already disappointed us and have failed to meet the expectations of most of us, so let's just take the site for what it is. It's a disappointment, yes, but it was always bound to be a disappointment given what happened there. At least we will have four very large (and mostly gorgeous) towers in Downtown Manhattan again.

But I do not for a minute think this site will become the symbol of the skyline for as long as the ESB or original WTC were. Things will surpass it.

[StrongIsland]

They might as well leave it a superblock if all the streets are going to be contained, it will probably happen anyway. Durst will probably come up with an excuse to not have streets run across the site, theres your safety from cars!

[hunser]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/17/t...an-skyscraper/

The Post-American Skyscraper

Posted by Daniel Greenfield Bio ↓ on May 17th, 2012

In the days and weeks after September 11 hardly a day would go by without another homemade design for the World Trade Center showing up in my inbox. Some were crude, some were obscene, some were impossible to construct and some were genuinely visionary. Even those most familiar with the crusted workings of New York state and city government, not to mention the bi-state beast of the Port Authority, could hardly have imagined that eleven years later one far smaller tower would still be under construction.

One World Trade Center, formerly the Freedom Tower before that name was deemed too showy and patriotic, is a faintly shiny presence on the skyline, glass slowly sliding over stories of naked steel, overshadowed by Frank Gehry’s strikingly surreal Beekman Tower with its rippling lines. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you would hardly notice it was there.

Now One World Trade Center will lose a radome enclosure due to budget cuts, which means very little except that the building’s ridiculous 400 foot spire risks being classified as an antenna and OWTC will no longer be recognized as the tallest building in the country. The death of the radome is one of the many redesigns to the building that have made it the forgettable structure that it is today. And the difference in those 400 feet is the difference between a 1,368 foot skyscraper and a 1,776 foot skyscraper.

Having lost the Freedom Tower designation, losing the symbolic 1,776 height seems almost an afterthought. The 1,776 number was an artifact of Daniel Libeskind, the original architect, and his vision for the site. That vision was mostly discarded, along with its “sky gardens” and windmills. The “1,776″ height is about all that remains of the German-Jewish architect’s proposal. And regardless of whether we count the antenna as a spire or not, it will not be the tallest building in the world. Those can be found in the places that funded the terrorists, Saudi Arabia and Dubai, which have used slave labor to build glass and steel pyramids to the glory of their own pharaohs.

The Empire State Building, the Grande Dame of New York skyscrapers, has a roof height of around a 100 feet or 30 meters lower. The difference between a skyscraper built during the Great Depression and one built during the 21st Century Depression is around 100 feet and about a century of aesthetics. Where the spire of the Empire State Building is an organic extension of it, the one atop OWTC is awkwardly placed, it’s just there making time and filling up the space.

In its defense, One World Trade Center is graceful enough compared to the Sears Tower or the Dubai Burj, which pile blocks and needles together in a cluster of alien geometry. It will be better looking than the New York Times Building and the Bank of America Tower, which both have that made- by-IKEA look. It will also be completely unremarkable and that is a feature, not a bug.

Its blandness of name and design convey that it is an apolitical structure. Its only ambition is to embody a post-American bigness made possible by a large antenna. Its unexceptional nature is an antidote to the American exceptionalism sparked after the September 11 massacre. Much like welcoming in a mosque near Ground Zero or incorporating Islamic elements into the Flight 93 Memorial, it says that there is nothing especially American here.

One World Trade Center will need to fill all that office space, and many international renters may do business in America, but they don’t like us very much. And ever since September 11, American political and business leaders have tried to be as inoffensive as possible, to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes with our jingoism and our flags so that next time we don’t get bombed.

The former Freedom Tower will be a properly post-American building. It will be big, but not too big. It will be smaller than the towers put up by our enemies so that they will have no reason to feel jealous. It will not stand for anything in particular. It will just be office space, like the city and the country, a place that people can come to do business without making any commitment to it.

“A skyscraper rises above its predecessors, restoring the spiritual peak of the city, creating an icon that speaks to our vitality in the face of danger and our optimism in the aftermath of tragedy,” Libeskind had said of his design. One World Trade Center cannot be accused of doing any of that. There is no spiritual peak, not even the one at the top of its no-longer-1,776-foot height.

The rapid construction of the Empire State Building in a year’s time during the Great Depression made a statement about the ability of a nation to do great things even in its darkest hour. The slow pace, the perpetual redesigns and the bland final product of One World Trade Center make the opposite statement. A reminder that inept and timid leadership can rob a nation of its exceptionalism.

In 1910 the eleven tallest buildings in the world were in New York City. Now the city doesn’t even make it into the top eleven and barely makes it into the top twenty. And the majority of today’s top eleven buildings went up after the World Trade Center was destroyed. When One World Trade Center is completed, and, if its antenna is counted as part of its height, it will qualify as the third-tallest building in the world, until the latest monstrosities in Shanghai and Dubai topple it off that list.

A building is not a nation, but there are certain parallels to the diminution of national ambition, and there are undeniable parallels between the stumbling makeshift design process of One World Trade Center and the fumbling War on Terror. A great work can be done in a short time if you know what it is you want to accomplish. The blueprints for the Empire State Building were drawn up in two weeks and the structure was completed in a year. One World Trade Center has suffered from revisions and redesigns because it never had a clear purpose. Most people agreed that something had to go up, but they no longer knew why except that it was empty space and empty space has to be filled.

It’s not a tower of freedom, because freedom implies too much individual agency. It has opportunities for those who pursue them hard enough. It does not however have a future. Only the eternal present of buildings that, for all their futurism, are hardly any taller than they were a hundred years ago.

Futures arise from national destinies. A nation unmoored from its past has nowhere to go. It cannot make anything new, because there are no new things. Its horizons are limited to its geometry, it experiments with shapes and colors, it digs through the trash of earlier eras for things it can use, reviving trends, dumpster diving through history while feeling that other eras were more exciting and more interesting than this.

The Post-American America is a place unsure of its identity, whose new conceptions of American values all too often serve only to negate the old, creating an empty space in which nothing is forbidden and everyone is welcome, but that has no structure, only emptiness.

[Zapatan]

That was an amazing , all too painfully true, article

[uaarkson]

That article is hilariously bad. Those damn turrists in Dubai, building monuments to their pharaohs! Heathens!

Meanwhile, New York is entering its most significant skyscraper boom ever, and this guy wants to bitch about the death of American exceptionalism. What a tool.

[photoLith]

Personally I find one 57 and 432 park avenue to be much more awesome than One World Trade. That new antenna looks like something you would see in some Russian city from the 60s.

[nergie]

Originally Posted by hunser

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/17/t...an-skyscraper/

The Post-American Skyscraper

Posted by Daniel Greenfield Bio ↓ on May 17th, 2012

Seriously comparing the Sears Tower to a ready made IKEA furniture kit. Just because it's not in NYC doesn't mean it is not a great design. Seriously

[rjb001]

Originally Posted by hunser

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/17/t...an-skyscraper/

The Post-American Skyscraper

Posted by Daniel Greenfield Bio ↓ on May 17th, 2012

That article seems incredibly narrow-minded, highly opinionated, and not so much fact-based. It is a bummer that the new antenna may not count in the building's official height, but that doesn't make any other building that is built taller a "monstrosity" by any means. The buildings going up in Shanghai and Dubai are actually very visually pleasing like One WTC.

And as for the claim that America's desire to build tall has diminished, look at how many of the ten tallest are done by SOM, an American company. The fact that Burj Khalifa, Shanghai Tower, and One WTC are all done by an American company that continues to push the boundaries of height and design, completely debunks the claim that American innovation is lacking simply because the world's tallest buildings aren't just built in America anymore.

[NYC GUY]

Why can't they at least compromise on putting some sort of enclosure on the spire to make it 1776' feet and look good. I'm hoping that they can compromise on something good.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Roadcruiser1

Danny Meyer Submits Bid for WTC Observation Deck

You know Durst won't pick him. Some inedible shit like Aramark or Sysco will be cheaper and he will go with that.