those schemes all look pretty bad. i usually like libeskind’s work, his holocaust museum is amazing, but this thing doesn’t do much for me. norman foster’s design is fair. at least it’s somewhat elegant. i don’t know what meier was thinking. his work has always been consistant, but this thing is a joke. he’s a bit formulaic, but i’ve never seen a building so clumsy in my life.
but skyscrapers are played out. i think mies van der rohe was the last innovator in the high-rise field. ever since then skyscrapers have either been huge phalluses or cheap imitations. of course i’m generalizing here, because there’s been some great high-rises int he last 50 years, but they’re few and far between.
Is it stipu;lated anywhere that the building has to be plane-proof?
That might be a starting point. Imagine the effect on the national psyche if the new one got taken out too.
There’s no way to make the buildings “plane-proof.” As one of the engineers of the WTC put it, “The only way you can make a building totally safe from plane crashes, is not to have a plane crash into it.”
Any new building in NYC has to be able to withstand the impact of a plane crash. That just means the building won’t totally implode the moment it gets hit.
I assumed that the “Thing” in the THINK design was a reference to where the planes hit, connected to make a museum. I don’t think they MENT it to look like a plane crashing into the towers.
Well, from what I understand, those folks tend to think New Yorker’s do that to them anyway, so this would just give them something to point to as proof.
I still want a Giant Mechanical Jesus to swat down planes! Give me my Giant Mechanical Jesus!!! Don’t make me build it in my basement, cuz i will!! I’ve got just that much free time!!!
I must be easy to please, but I liked all the designs, except for the big tic-tac-toe board.
I don’t think a new building should ‘fit in’ in Manhattan. I think it should stand out and be as controversial as the first WTC was.
And I think think some of those designs are just ingenious. Like the big trellis thing that can grow in two dimensions over time as it fills up. Or the huge ‘city in the sky’. Cool stuff.
And I would imagine that the new buildings will be designed to withstand impact from a jetliner, including the fuel it pours down everything.
1: Our Cyber City will have a State of the Art External Security System which at this stage evolves around “Sound Waves” which has the capacity at a specific frequency to repel flying objects up to a five mile circumference. We will seek support from the political system to bring about an edict that a “Five Mile No Fly Zone” area is put into effect around the island of Manhattan.
Okay, I’m no architect but black granite? #1 - price would be astronomical.; #2 - I’m thinking the footer of that building would have to be the size of Manhattan in order to accomodate the weight of 100+ vertical stories of granite.
Personally, the only concept that doesn’t offend me is Peterson & Littenberg. The other ones try too hard to be edgy. They stick out like a sore thumb from the rest of the landscape. A building should complement its surroundings, not compete with it.
Can anyone else picture Prince Charles’s reaction to these ideas?
It’s either the Westin Bonaventure hotel in Los Angeles or Marriott’s Renaissance Center hotel in Detroit, both of which are designed by John Portman & Associates.
Thumbs down on black granite. I don’t think materials cost and weight would be an issue (IIRC, skyscrapers typically weigh less than the earth that has been removed underneath them because these buildings are basically just walls surrounding a lot of empty air), but the cooling bill during the summer would be horrendous.
