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The supposedly safer Freedom Tower designs will be unveiled today, and it's more streamlined. And maybe more boring - but any hopes of something interesting went away when Larry Silverstein got more involved with the design. The NY Times writes that the tower's "height and proportion, centered antenna and cut-away corners, tall lobbies and pinstripe facade [evokes] - both deliberately and coincidentally - the sky-piercing twins it is meant to replace." The tower, designed by David Childs and his firm, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, is now set further back and has a more reinforced base; there's no more spire, windmills on the roof, latticework, and other elements of the Daniel Libeskind deign. It will be, however, still be 1,776 feet tall. The wild card is when Freedom Tower will be completed (2009? 2010?); an interesting point is that now the simpler design may help save money and time.
More about the design from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
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okay, so what was the whole point of the design competition? just to get ideas out there? one tower vs many? tall vs short?
Huh. You know, my boss has a Paper weight that looks like the "New" building less the Spire...
Is David Childs stealing designs again?!?
This is exactly what i predicted to friends- the "safety redesign" was a cover for David Child's completely redoing the design and striping anything with soul out of the tower. It is now officially the world's tallest AOL-Time-Warner Center.
None of the following will be in the tower:
-windmills
-the "world gardens" (remember those?)
-reminicence of the statue of liberty
-anything that's not office space
This makes me want to barf. It's entirely Pataki's fault.
If it has to be ugly, can we at least get two? Curbed.com has it right, it looks like something outta Philly.
seems like the competition was an elaborate sham to allow larry silverstein to get david childs to design yet another of his benign, uninspiring and utterly forgettable office buildings.
my favorite quote in the ny times from mr. childs is "I feel better about this than the original." of course you do because it takes no risk and that is what you are best at. and to call the spire the "victory column" is insulting. as i learned in school it is much easier to talk about good design then it is to actually produce it.
and perhaps the most telling description from mr. childs is about the building's octagonal shape. "Eight corner offices" is spoken exactly like the developer's vehicle that america's most uninspiring architects have generally become.
It Stinks. A little more imagination could help...
And please change the name from Freedom Tower to something else. Please?
Oh God, it's heinous. :-( Liebeskind's design had so much soul, character and creativity. It would have been an amazing addition to the skyline. This is just a gigantic misshapen office building. I hate Pataki so, so much.
wow. I think this new design is actually more meaningful, albeit in a tragic way. it eerily reflects the original form (at the peak), but it also evokes a new kind of defensiveness. I see the flaring at the bottom (a more stable structure) and the windowless base as a clear reflection of our new insecurity. I think it's an accurate reflection of how a lot of people (realistically) feel these days.
and I can't help but read that new shape as this melding of the two former towers into a new, more defensible form.
we show strength through rebuilding, and yet the fear seems so evident.
This feels better than the Libeskind tower, simply because it looks a bit more like the originals. But as someone said before, why can't there be two? The Twin Towers were distinctive not because of their shape, but because they were twins. Still, I'd rather see something like the Twin Towers II.
completely devoid of creativity and soul with nothing that reflects any sense of place. you could plop this static, meaningless mcskyskraper in any city in the world and not make a bit of difference. it's a grand monument to homoginized america and the faceless, inhuman junk pumped out of greedy developers with no vision and not a trace of ingenuity. at least we can be proud of the biggest yawn in the world.
It's a small improvement on the Liebeskind design, but is still short of anything resembling interesting or relevent. It looks like something custom made for short fingered vulgarians. And yeah, it does look more suited to Philly than NYC. I still think the Gaudi design rules.
Worst...Tower...Ever...
Totally depressing. Truly the power of architecture, if it had any to begin with in this process, has been rendered irrelevant. Corner offices for everyone.
I figured out how Childs protected himself from charges that his building would be ugly. Make it so banal that it can't be ugly.
At least ugly would have indicated taking a risk.
Remember the very first designs? The ones that made us all go ugh? The ones we voted on in the Javits center? Amazing how much like those original pieces of crap this piece of crap design looks like.
I figured out how Childs protected himself from charges that his building would be ugly. Make it so banal that it can't be ugly.
At least ugly would have indicated taking a risk.
Remember the very first designs? The ones that made us all go ugh? The ones we voted on in the Javits center? Amazing how much like those original pieces of crap this piece of crap design looks like.
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Wouldn't the American way be to build 3?
Build four in a square formation...two diagonally across from each other that are exactly like the old Twin Towers and the other two bigger and stronger, so they protect the smaller two.
While the top of Libeskind's tower evoked the curve of Liberty's torch-holding arm, Childs' version mimics the statue's more practical side: its base.
"Is David Childs stealing designs again?!"
Well, this does actually resemble Harry Weese's unbuilt design for a 200-story skyscraper in the early 1980s. It was called a "guyed tower," if I recall correctly. The way the corners rise diagonally from ground level to the twisted rooftop lets structural members at the corners act as guylines to better withstand wind loads.
oh hey here's a great idea- a 200' foot concrete wall! in a site that needs a more urban environment! that's a great idea, right?
Now that I think about it, Childs may be recycling one of his firm's own designs. This looks an awful lot like their aborted New York Stock Exchange Tower from about 2001. About 500 feet taller and with a spire, of course.
Why was Libeskind chosen at all? His shadow memorial (every 9-11) did not work. He did not design the memorial, he did not design the path station. Now, his building design will not be used. What the heck does he do?
I loved the THINK tema's lattice towers. That was something unique. Of course, Patakii vetoed that choice because some family members said that it would remind them of skeletons.
Now we get, as has being metioned before, one of the old original designs that got so many people angry and led to the bogus design contest.
This building is a piece of trash, Child's clearly designs with Crayola Crayons. The utter lack of creativity in what could have otherwise been this century's first great architectural monument is shameful.