1 World Trade Center/ Freedom Tower // New York // SOM
1 World Trade Center (‘Freedom Tower’) by SOM is the main building of the new World Trade Center complex currently under construction in Lower Manhattan in New York City.
The tower will be located in the northwest corner of the 16-acre (65,000 m²) World Trade Center site, bound by Vesey, West, Washington and Fulton streets. Construction on below-ground utility relocations, footings, and foundations for the 1,776-foot (541 m) Freedom Tower began on April 27, 2006. On December 19, 2006, the first steel columns were installed in the building’s foundation.
Three other high-rise office buildings are planned for the site along Greenwich Street, and they will surround the World Trade Center Memorial, which is currently under construction. The area will also be home to a museum dedicated to the history of the site.
Daniel Libeskind won the invitational competition to develop a masterplan for the World Trade Center’s redevelopment in 2002.
He included an initial proposal for the design of Freedom Tower, a building with aerial gardens and windmills with an off center spire. It was also Libeskind who denied a request to place the tower in a more rentable location next to the PATH station and instead placed it a block west because in profile it would line up and resemble the Statue of Liberty.
Although these designs have since been changed, his contributions continue to shape the design and development at Ground Zero, as they are revised to meet economic and security realities.
The Freedom Tower will consist of simple symmetries and a more traditional design intended to bear comparison with selected elements of the existing New York skyline.
Current design
The Freedom Tower’s program includes 2.6 million square feet (241,000 square meters) of office space, as well as an observation deck, world-class restaurants, parking, and broadcast and antennae facilities, all supported by both above and below-ground mechanical infrastructure for the building and its adjacent public spaces. Below-ground tenant parking and storage, shopping and access to the PATH and subway trains and the World Financial Center are also provided.
An 80-foot-high (24 m) public lobby topped by a series of mechanical floors form a 200-foot-high (61 m) building base. 69 tenant floors rise above the base to 1,120 feet (341 m) elevation. Mechanical floors, two floors to be occupied by the Metropolitan Television Alliance, restaurants and observation decks culminate in an observation deck and glass parapet that mark 1,362 feet (415 m) and 1,368 feet (417 m) respectively — the heights of the original Twin Towers. A shrouded antenna structure supported by cables, engineered by Schlaich Bergermann & Partner rises to a total height of 1,776 feet (541 m), which is symbolic of the year the United States Declaration of Independence was signed (July 4, 1776).
The tower rises from a cubic base whose square plan—200 feet by 200 feet—(61 m by 61 m) is almost as wide as the 208-foot (63 m) Twin Towers. The base is clad in more than 2,000 pieces of prismatic glass; each measures 4 feet by 13 feet 4 inches (1.21 m by 4.06 m) with varying depths. It has been designed to draw upon the themes of motion and light; a shimmering glass surface drapes the tower’s base and imparts a dynamic fluidity of form whose appearance will reflect its surroundings. Just as the rest of the building, the base will serve as a glowing beacon. Cable-net facades on all four sides of the buildings, again designed by Schlaich Bergermann, measure 60 feet (18 m) high and range in width from 30 feet (9 m) on the east and west sides (for access to the restaurant and observation deck, respectively) to 50 feet (15 m) on the north side and 70 feet (21 m) on the south for primary tenant access, activate the building at street level.
‘Its structure is designed around a strong, redundant steel moment frame consisting of beams and columns connected by a combination of welding and bolting. Paired with a concrete-core shear wall, the moment frame lends substantial rigidity and redundancy to the overall building structure while providing column-free interior spans for maximum flexibility.’
Like all of the new facilities at the World Trade Center site, the Freedom Tower will be heated by steam, with limited oil or natural gas utilities located on site.
Height
The roof of the top floor of the Freedom Tower will be 1,362-foot (415 m), the same as 2 World Trade Center. A six-foot parapet on top of the roof will bring the building’s height to 1,368-foot (417 m), the same as 1 World Trade Center. If the spire and antenna height (the criteria of two categories of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat) are included, Freedom Tower will stand at a symbolic 1,776-foot (541 m), marking 1776, the year of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence. Freedom Tower was originally planned to be the tallest building in the world, but will no longer obtain this title, as the Burj Dubai has already broken the record for the tallest building at 2,684-foot (818 m).
The Freedom Tower will surpass the Sears Tower in Chicago to become the second tallest freestanding structure in the Americas, after the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada. The Chicago Spire, which was originally scheduled for completion in 2012, is also expected to exceed the Freedom Tower’s height but its construction has currently been halted due to financial problems.
The World Trade Center’s South Tower had an outdoor rooftop observation deck at 1,377 feet (420 m) and another indoor observation deck at 1,310 feet (399 m). The Freedom Tower’s indoor observation deck, at a height of 1,265 feet (386 m), will not be as high as either of the observation decks destroyed in the South Tower.
Space allotment
As revealed on June 28, 2006, Freedom Tower will have a top floor denoted as 102, though the total number of floors is 82 (possibly with some uncounted floors). This is because the first office floor of the building atop the tall base will be designated as Floor 20. There are 69 office floors atop the base, ending at Floor 88, above which would be broadcasting space on the 89th and 90th floors. Three stories of mechanical space take up a floor count of 9. Finally, a restaurant will take up Floors 100 and 101, and the observation deck is at Floor 102. Six additional floors of mechanical space exist above to Floor 108. Additionally, roughly 55,000 square feet (5,100 m2) of retail space will exist below-grade, part of an overall 500,000 square feet (46,000 m2) of retail space to be spread throughout the site both in the below-grade concourses and on the lower floors of Towers 2, 3, and 4.
Floor breakdown
* 1-19 – tower base (including 80 ft (24 m) tall lobby and 3 mechanical floors)
* 20-63 – offices
* 64 – skylobby
* 65-88 – offices
* 89-99 – mechanical floors
* 100-102 – observation deck and other public facilities to be announced
* 103-108 – mechanical floors
Future progress
The Freedom Tower had been expected to reach rooftop level by the end of 2010 with topping out expected by 2011. However in an October 2, 2008 follow-up report by Ward, the estimated completion of the tower was pushed back to some time between the second and fourth quarter of 2013 with a total budget of $3.1 billion and the use of 46,000 tons of steel.
Some parts via: www.wikipedia.org.
Related posts:
Recent Comments