Designs Unveiled for Freedom Tower’s Neighbors
Published: September 7, 2006
The developer of the new World Trade Center unveiled the designs this morning for three skyscrapers at ground zero, which in their gargantuan scale would reshape the New York skyline.
The designs offered the most comprehensive picture to date of what the finished complex might -- just might -- look like six years from now. Above, the Freedom Tower is to the left of Towers 2, 3 and 4.
Each building has a different renowned architect — Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, both of London, and Fumihiko Maki of Tokyo — and the result is entirely unlike the monolithic uniformity of the original trade center.
The office towers, designated simply Towers 2, 3 and 4 for now, would occupy three sites between Church and Greenwich Streets, along the eastern edge of the trade center site. Together with the winged PATH terminal and transportation hub, they would form the face that the trade center presents to the rest of downtown, with the signature Freedom Tower behind them.
The designs presented this morning by the developer, Larry A. Silverstein, together offered the most comprehensive picture to date of what the finished complex might — just might — look like six years from now.
Lord Foster’s Tower 2, with a rooftop of four enormous diamonds steeply inclined toward the memorial below, would be as high as the Empire State Building. Tower 3 by Lord Rogers, framed boldly by an exoskeletal framework of diagonal beams, would reach a pinnacle of 1,255 feet at its corner antennas. Even the smallest and subtlest building among them, Mr. Maki’s Tower 4, would be taller than the Citigroup Center in midtown.
If these buildings form any kind of ensemble with the Freedom Tower — Tower 1, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of New York — , it would probably be a jazz quartet.
Published: September 7, 2006
The developer of the new World Trade Center unveiled the designs this morning for three skyscrapers at ground zero, which in their gargantuan scale would reshape the New York skyline.
The designs offered the most comprehensive picture to date of what the finished complex might -- just might -- look like six years from now. Above, the Freedom Tower is to the left of Towers 2, 3 and 4.
Each building has a different renowned architect — Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, both of London, and Fumihiko Maki of Tokyo — and the result is entirely unlike the monolithic uniformity of the original trade center.
The office towers, designated simply Towers 2, 3 and 4 for now, would occupy three sites between Church and Greenwich Streets, along the eastern edge of the trade center site. Together with the winged PATH terminal and transportation hub, they would form the face that the trade center presents to the rest of downtown, with the signature Freedom Tower behind them.
The designs presented this morning by the developer, Larry A. Silverstein, together offered the most comprehensive picture to date of what the finished complex might — just might — look like six years from now.
Lord Foster’s Tower 2, with a rooftop of four enormous diamonds steeply inclined toward the memorial below, would be as high as the Empire State Building. Tower 3 by Lord Rogers, framed boldly by an exoskeletal framework of diagonal beams, would reach a pinnacle of 1,255 feet at its corner antennas. Even the smallest and subtlest building among them, Mr. Maki’s Tower 4, would be taller than the Citigroup Center in midtown.
If these buildings form any kind of ensemble with the Freedom Tower — Tower 1, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of New York — , it would probably be a jazz quartet.
