As the world completes yet another full rotation around the sun, another anniversary of one of the most tragic events in recent history is upon us. The September 11th of 2001, a balmy day in fall in New York City, is now almost universally associated with the terrible act of terrorism that occurred on that fateful day. As we conmemorate the 13th year of the September 11 attacks, the most meaningful piece of architecture to look at are the very same ones that were destroyed in those attacks - the World Trade Center twin towers - and remember them not only with their destruction along with many innocent lives, but also with their architectural significance.
The WTC twins, part of a vast seven-building development dubbed the World Trade Center, occupied multiple blocks of prime real estate in Lower Manhattan. The 110-story twin towers - namely the North Tower and the South Tower - were the crown jewels of the development, soaring 417 meters to the sky and holding the honor of being the tallest buildings of the time when they were completed on April 4, 1973. Along with five other buildings that made up the WTC complex, the center offered a whopping 1,240,000 square meters of office space to the city. Until their destruction in 2001, the towers carried an iconic meaning and stayed as highly visible landmarks of New York City.
Plans for a new development at the southwestern tip of Manhattan island were floating as early as the World War II period. The war had left the country's finances in shambles, and a return to normalcy would require the restoration of a sound financial sector. To do that properly, a financial center worth of global scale was needed, and New York City, specifically Manhattan, desperately in need of revitalization and full of opportunities, was the most obvious choice. In 1946, a bill was passed in the New York State legislature that envisaged the establishment of a world trade center which founded a corporation specifically for this purpose. An initial plan of 21 buildings built on ten city blocks was developed; although this plan was later put on hold in 1949 after the dissolving of the World Trade Corporation by the New York State legislature.
Later plans for a world trade center complex were pioneered by the business mogul David Rockefeller, who advocated that the Port Authority (of New York and New Jersey) - a transportation focused venture jointly owned by the two states neighboring the Hudson river, New York and New Jersey - should be the appropriate owner of the project. Following a yer of negotiations, the PANYNJ backed the project in 1961, and location scouting for the new center began. As Lower Manhattan had been left out of recent economic development that Midtown Manhattan had enjoyed, it was floated that this part of the island would be a logical choice for the location.
As the PANYNJ required the approval of both states of New York and New Jersey for the project, there was one issue: the project site would be in New York City, and that would mean spending of New Jersey's money for a project with little benefit to the state. To alleviate these concerns, the location for the center was selected on the shores of West Hudson close to New Jersey (contrary to earlier plans that called for an East Hudson location), and the H&M Railroad (later renamed PATH), a railroad company that operated between the two shores then in deep financial trouble, was acquired by the PANYNJ. Thus the project was born.
Further issues regarding the existing tenants of the location kept the project from going ahead, as courts were involved in the setllement of the issues pertaining to eminent domain. Finally in 1963, the courts gave the green light to the project, and the architect hired to design the center, Minoru Yamasaki, got to work on the daunting task. In 1964, initial plans for the center were made public, and further public outcry ensued: the sheer size of the project scared other real-estate landlords as a huge amount of subsidized office space would be flooding the market and eroding their profits. Nonetheless, these did not slow the project down.
The PANYNJ demanded at least 930,000 square meters of office space for the center, and Yamasaki had to come up with the eventual design that consisted of twin towers each with 110 floors to meet this requirement. An international style building was favored by Yamasaki, who designed two towers with square floor plans with 63 meter sides. His fear of heights dictated the size of the rather small windows of the building.
To overcome the puzzling task of fitting enough elevators to carry people within the towers, the concept of sky lobbies - earlier used in John Hancock Tower in Chicago - was adopted. In this design, several express elevators carried people to sky lobbies on floors 44 and 78, where people would transfer to local elevators to their floors. Other innovative techniques used for the center included the construction of a concrete slurry wall to keep the Hudson river water out of the foundation during construction, and wind experiments carried out in wind tunnels on small scale models of the towers.
Ather the groundbreaking in 1966, the construction team spent more than a full year building the slurry wall. Following the completion of the slurry wall, foundation works began; the actual work on the North Tower started in 1968 and on the South Tower in early 1969. Several mishaps occurred during the construction phase, including strikes, explosions, and other work-related accidents, all in all claiming the lives of 60 workers.
The topping out of the towers were in late 1970 and mid-1971 respectively, with tenants moving in the North Tower in December 1970 and the South Tower in January 1972. The 920,000 cubic meters of earth dug for the construction was used to add land to Manhattan along the West Hudson that measured 210 meters by 452 meters, which was used later for new development. The project overran its estimated budget of 350 million dollars by almost 200 percent, reaching nearly 900 million dollars.
The attacks carried out by al-Qaeda in 2001 led to the eventual collapse of both towers. The crash of the two passenger jets into the buildings resulted in a catastrophe that led to the death of 2752 people, including those present on the planes. The aftermath of the attacks involved one of the largest site clean-up efforts in modern times, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. An architectural competition was carried out for a new WTC complex, and the proposal of Polish architect Daniel Libeskind was selected for the site. As of 2013, the crowning building of the new complex, the WTC Tower 1, had been completed, becoming the tallest building in the United States. May it have a trouble-free existence.
No comments:
Post a Comment