I mean, jolly good for them and all that, but am I the only one who thinks it still looks kind of…boring? At best?
The most remarkable part about it’s outline seems to be that it’s not a perfect rectangle. And the “spire” on top looks…like an object. I’ll give it that much, in definitely looks like something that was constructed.
A few ridiculous Art Deco fins would have made the latter at least look distinct. But hell, anything would make it look more distinct. I actually think adding giant video billboards a la Blade Runner would improve it, and make it look a damn sight more futuristic. 'Pay for themselves, too.
It gets even worse when you see how the other planned buildings for the new WTC complex are apparently going to look, in appearance, size, and orientation. They don’t even have a common design theme to tie it all together, aside from “glass.” And “blue.”
And the artistic impressions I’ve seen of the future, completed new Lower Manhattan skyline look similarly…respectable. Like really nice vanilla pudding. But that could be any city. Reno has a more distinctive skyline. Dallas has a more distinctive skyline.
Bah. Sorry. Stupid, irrelevant artistic quibble I just wanted to get off my chest. Maybe to be more entertaining, I should have turned this into a poll of how the 1WTC/FT design could have been improved. Like, I dunno, by replacing the spire with a big tree. Even a fake one. Or one of those wacky arm-flailing inflatable tube men, or a giant paper-mache King Kong. Or a big “A.”Something.
What is find most distasteful is that it took 13 years to get built. The biggest middle finger we could have ever given the terrorists would have been to rebuild the just as they were in as short a time as possible. Instead we obliged them them by wasting American blood and treasure in a war that accomplished nothing.
Yea, I was a fan of the old buildings, even as boring as they were (it was their boringness that made them not boring…wait, do I sound like a hipster?), but I think the new one is fine.
But, I also wish they’d have just rebuilt them as they were. Except with more fireproofing.
I’ve seen pictures only. I like it up until the spire, which looks like an ugly giant antenna to me. A gruesome addition only added to get it to the required 1776 feet.
I just want to know why it cost nearly four billion dollars. The Burj Khalifa still stands as the world’s tallest man-made anything at 2722 feet, and it cost only 1.5 billion, so “tall” can’t be the reason, and the Burj is not exactly a low-rent place, so “fancy” can’t explain it either.
“The Burj Khalifa still stands as the world’s tallest man-made anything at 2722 feet, and it cost only 1.5 billion, so “tall” can’t be the reason, and the Burj is not exactly a low-rent place, so “fancy” can’t explain it either.”
Among other things, I suspect the average rate of pay for average construction worker on the BK was quite a lot less than that of people working in NYC.
At the risk of being labeled anti-patriotic or some other silly thing, I think that calling it Freedom Tower and making it 1776 feet tall is all kinds of hokey. I guess it’s a good thing no one consulted me, huh? I agree that the originals should have been rebuilt as they were.
One World Trade Center is also built under the assumption that people are going to be ramming airplanes into it in an attempt to knock it down, which presumably requires a lot of expensive over-engineering.
I was also uncomfortable with “Freedom Tower,” which was redolent of “freedom fries” and other jingoistic stuff. I was somewhat relieved when I learned that the official name of the building is simply “One World Trade Center.”
I like the design. It’s not just a rectangle plopped down in the middle of the city, like so many skyscrapers, but it’s also not so out there that it looks like an immature attention-grab. Though I’m not sure about the spire.
