Designs Unveiled for Freedom Tower’s Neighbors (other new WTC buildings)

[Ignacio Upton]

Designs Unveiled for Freedom Tower’s Neighbors

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

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.

Each building has a different 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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/nyregion/08towerscnd.html?_r=1&oref=login

[patricia92243]

1. No American architects available, I suppose?

[Ignacio Upton]

2. That means what exactly?

I don't care what nationallity the architects of this site are, as long as they design something good. I like the towers designed by Foster and Rogers, but Maki's is a generic POS. Interestingly this make's Lower Manhattan's skyline look more like Hong Kong's or Shanghai's.

[patricia92243]

4. It means that I DO CARE.

[badgervan]

7. With Ya

Gotta agree ( from a commercial art major ). Form follows function. Less is more. Two entirely different styles that are way too close to each other. Both styles suffer. Pick one or the other.

[Kutjara]

3. Nothing original there.

Where the former WTC was a bold and original statement, these buildings are a hodgepodge of fairly typical current styles. Each one looks like any number of buildings in Hong Kong, Tokyo or Shanghai. Collectively, they're undistinguished, overconservative and uninteresting. If the intention was to recreate an icon in a modern idiom, I'd say they're failing spectacularly.

[Ignacio Upton]

6. That's corporate architecture for ya

...Unfortunately, Silverstein and the PA are the one's with the cash, and they want to do everything they can to make the buildings "business-friendly" and the floor-plates of big glass boxes are generally considered better for companies that want lots of space.
But compared to the FT, I still like the new 2 WTC and new 3 WTC better (although the new 4 WTC is a fucking joke and should be redesigned.)

[Scooter24]

5. If I ever moved my business to NYC,

I would love to have my offices in one of the new towers. God only knows the cost though x(