World Trade Center (1971-2001) Model

[STR]

An out growth of my NWTC model, this will be a complete model of the entire World Trade Center by Yamasaki/Emery Roth/Skidmore Owings and Merrill. The are and most likely will not be textures of any kind in the model. Everything will be articulated in 3D. Every facade detail, even hte internal colums will be shown. I might even make the WTC mall that was under the plaza if I can find plans.

As of right now I've completed the Twin Towers except for the roof and the lobbies, and 5WTC (Morgan Stanely/Credit Suisse) except for some internal elements. The next building will be 4WTC, followed by 6WTC.

Twin Towers


5WTC. The first two renders show the building at various stages of design. The rest show it essenitally complete.


BTW Would anyone happen to have photos of the commodities exchange in 4WTC? All I've found out is that it occupied portions of the top 3 floors of the building and was located there through to the end. It's supposedly featured at the end of Trading Places (IMDB Link), but I don't know if that's the real location, as opposed to a set or a cheaper location, nor do I have a copy of the film (which is dumb, because it's a great movie).

[Lecom]

Amazing. Realistic as fuck.

[vid]

^Interesting expression.

But I agree.

[LSyd]

good work.

-

[Mr Man]

Wow.. I get this eerie feeling looking at these photos. Excellent work STR, you're truly talented.

[STR]

Originally Posted by Lecom

Amazing. Realistic as fuck.

Originally Posted by vidioman

^Interesting expression.

It's the kind of expression one makes when that can't think of anything better. It's a hell of a compliment, thanks.

Originally Posted by Mr Man

Wow.. I get this eerie feeling looking at these photos. Excellent work STR, you're truly talented.

I'm more anal than talented. Once all the details are accounted for, everything just springs into reality.

But yeah, it does get eerie when I remember what happened and all the photos I press over are of buildings that don't exist. Even the post 9/11 wreckage photos (which ironically are some of the best/most detailed images of the plaza buildings on the net) don't really click unless I stop to think about them. Otherwise I'm just combing the photos for some obscure feature, barely noticing the damaged parts.



But back to the renders. The first set is of me building 4 World Trade. I start off with the colums, properly spaced at 30 feet on center, to work out the shape of the building. Next I add the lower floors. Thw windows are one long band stretching the length of the wall. This is done to reduce the number of faces (triangles) in the building to keep things running smooth.

Starting with the 3rd floor, I create the 15 foot overhangs, and continue with the wider floors until I reach the roof. Then I added the arches on the lower section, followed by the window frames. Then comes the main facade, which is broken up into 30 foot sections (6 rows of windows) and copied across the face of the building. Finally I add the rooftop mechanical penthouse and the one foot high paraphet. And it's basically done.

4WTC took half the time 5WTC took, as I could basically copy the parts I made for 6 and add them to 4. The finshed building is shown below. (EDIT: Almost finished. It seems there was some kind of addition made to the building on the wall directly facing 2WTC, I'll have to add it) The last render is from the Windows on the World level, 106 or 107, I'm not sure which as I didn't count. I just followed the building elevation and put floor slabs where it told me to.

[STR]

6WTC, the last of the plaza office buildings. However, this one has some differences. For one reason or another, Yamasaki chose not to implement the same lace-like exterior facade that he used on 4 and 5. Instead he went for something more sturdy (even though there's more glass) and corporate/government. It's lacking the typical Yamasaki delicate touch and replaces it with something more generic, almost van der Rohe-like. It'd be interesting to know why, as there seems to be a story behind all the buildings. Like the hotel I'm working on now. It was planned to open with the rest of the complex in 1973-74, but because of a spat between the PA and a city official, the bureaucrat held up 3WTC until he was out of office. Only then were plans drawn up, by SOM, for the hotel, which opened in 1981.


That addition to 4WTC I mentioned above. I'm not sure what it's use was, but like the 2nd mechanical pentouse in 5WTC, it was added late in the life of the Center. Mid-late 90's, perhaps an upgrade to the complex's electronic systems, which were straining.


After the Custom's House was done, I decided to fix up the plaza. All the buildings were getting photo-real and the plaza was dragging it all down. Amazing what a few trees and some pink lines can do, eh?


The beginning of 3WTC. This one will be tricky. The facade is very flat and that angled part will be an annoyance.

[1ajs]

omg

[foxmtbr]

R.I.P.

Nice job!

[JACKinNYC]

Whoa, dude! That's chillingly good.

[STR]

A Quicktime VR 360x360 degree panorama. This file is just over 1MB and requires a recent version of Quicktime. Use the mouse to drage the view around.

http://skyscrapermodels.us/pics/wtc_s.mov

[vid]

I've wanted to do that since I was a kid. It's not the real thing, but it'll do.

[STR]

^It's all we have left, unfortunately. There used to be a bunch of real 360 panos around the web, but almost all have been taken down or the site expired. I'll keep posting new panos as I go on, from different angles and times of day. The quality will improve too as I finish 3WTC, 7WTC, the twin tower roofs and lobbies as well as the plaza.

A larger version of the pano, with twice the resolution and weghing in at almost 4MB. There's an even larger version I rendered earlier, but it's 14MB size makes it unwieldy.
http://skyscrapermodels.us/pics/wtc_m.mov

Some new stills as well:


3WTC should be done either tomorrow or thursday, I've got to finsh the roof and put in that chunk that's missing in the last render. Then some more plaza work and I'll see what I can get done on 7 over the weekend. The Twin Tower interiors/roofs will be wrapped up sometime next week, and that's about it. Total model should have around 500,000 polygons, with 60,000 in each of the towers, 20,000 in the hotel, 10,000 in each of the plaza low-rises, and 50,000 in the outlying buildings.

[STR]

http://stevwm.tripod.com/wtctribute.htm

This site has collected most of the WTC panos that were available online. About half of them have since been removed. It was this slow vanishing of this material that compelled me to do this model, as there's no telling how much longer the information (and it takes a lot of photos and diagrams to do something like this right) will be around for anyone to do something like this.

In addition, it's my small part in keeping the memory alive. The WTC was an idea, a noble idea, best expressed by its architect. Summarized, the WTC represented the strive for world peace through world trade. I don't want that idea to die, nor the buildings that symbolized it, as is slowly happening.

[STR]

Unfortunately for me, this version is too old to be any good (the plaza had been completely redone and several floors had been added to the towers), however the rest of you might find this interesting.



This model is based on the above plans.

[STR]

http://skyscrapermodels.us/pics/wtc2_m.mov

http://skyscrapermodels.us/pics/wtc3_m.mov

[Bergenser]

pretty realistic..... good work

[Upward]

Great work!

[STR]

Wth the floors and colums stripped away, you can see the famous express/local elevator system.

[vpauzuolis]

nice