Top-Down view of the Circular Tower proposal on the 5 acre original block the towers once occupied (click for 10 cm = 1 px image1).
Now that we are working to try to return to normalcy — or at least as normal as possible — I want to share with you some of my personal thoughts on how best to remember those we lost while at the same time trying to move on. I personally feel that the towers, ugly as they, still were an indellible mark and critical to the asthetic nature of arguably the greatest city in the world (though honestly I prefer Montréal, PQ). My goal is not to try and recreate the past, but to show that we can build for the future. I am the first to admit that IANAA – I Am Not An Architect. Nor do I purport to have any artistic skill what-so-ever. I do have a basic knowledge of Engineering and especially Mechanics and Physics, and I will try to integrate this knowledge into my thoughts as time goes by, but for now, a few facts.
For the new towers, I think there are some constants we should keep in mind if we are to ever replace them. First of all, the original and any future towers would be restricted to a 16-acre lot bound by Vesey Street on the north, Church Street on the east, Liberty Street on the south, and West Street on the west, though only 5 acres were used for the Towers proper and their L-shaped counterparts, Towers 4 and 5. (The original towers were Towers 1 and 2. Recall that Towers 3 and 7 were also destroyed on 11 September 2001, with WTC 7 being the third tallest at 47 stories.) It is based on this that I will try to restrict my designs to the 5-acre area, rather than the full 16 acres, though I may propose designs for both possibilities.
What was revolutionary at the time is now so ubiquitous the concept is even part of Yoot Saito's famous "SimTower" game, a favourite of mine. The idea of Express Elevators taking you to a sky lobby that in turn would grant you access to a range of floors between it and the next, sort of like one building made up of many little buildings stacked one upon the other. This was the design that solved the building of elevators problem that Minoru Yamasaki faced as the original Towers' designer and Architect. In using the express elevator approach, Yamasaki was able to reduce the amount of floor space required by the elevators from 50% to only 25%, leaving approximately 43200 square feet, or 1 whole acre (4020 m2) per floor per tower. The sky lobbies were located on floors 44 and 78.
Buildings are measured in many different ways. By the recognized standards, we recognize:
(These terms come from Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.) Now for a long time, New York City would have held all 4 of these titles since at least 1913 with first the Woolworth Building (1913; 57 Stories; 241 m / 792 ft), then 40 Wall Street (1930; 72 Stories; 283 m / 927 ft) and Chrysler Building (1930; 77 Stories; 319 m / 1,046 ft) the world famous Empire State Building (1931; 102 Stories; 381 m / 1,250 ft) and finally, for about a year One World Trade Center (1972; 110 Stories; 417 m / 1,368 ft). In 1974, the Sears Tower of Chicago took all but one title from New York and One World Trade Center, leaving Height to the top of the antenna at 536 m / 1758 ft for the former first tower. Then in 1998, when these 4 measures were were created to placate the Republic of Malaysia and the United States, the Petronas Towers, at 88 stories, 452 m / 1,483 ft became the tallest building based on the Height to the structural or architectural top. Chicago still retained the other two titles, and now, in the post 11 September era, it also hold the fourth. For the first time in over 88 years, New York City, the home of the Sky Scraper, holds none of the four recognized measures of Tallest Building. It should be pointed out that although the 4 categories incoporate the tallest buildings of the world, they do not include the Tallest Tower which, by ignoring antenni, are defined simply as structures. The Canadian National (CN) Tower of Toronto, Ontario is the tallest and even taller than the antenna formerly on WTC1. The CN Tower, constructed in 1975, stands 553 m / 1,815 ft above downtown Toronto (without its antenna).
Unfortunately, the one standard of which we Americans should be most proud, the capacity and usefulness of our buildings, does not seem to be at all recognized as one of the great measures of buildings. This is a shame because at 110 stories, the two towers had just under 10 million ft2 (about 929,000 m2) or over 220 acres (as you might have guessed) of office space. The actual figure of about 231.5 acres is not clearly defined in the research I am doing but I assume the extra 11 1/2 acres is due to the underground parking or perhaps the other buildings. The long and the short of it is, any new towers should be able to house at least that 10,000,000 ft2 figure, and that is my goal in any proposal. In fact, with the hopeful rise and return in the economy expected in the coming years, I suggest that no less than 1,000,000 m2 (c. 10,800,000 ft2) be available to future tennants.
Top-Down view of the Circular Tower proposal on the 5 acre original
block the towers once occupied (click for
10 cm = 1 px
image1).
Ray-Traced with PovRay, this is one image with the Bridges in place
but Difference doesn't work for cropping the bridges to their correct
length so if you took away the towers you'd see the bridges are much
longer than they should be. The towers fortunately hide this
fact.
1. Approximately 1:283.5 at 72 dpi