This video just got released showing how the new buildings will look in the New York City skyline. Gotta admit it looks good. It fits right in. [wyt=Video]JU5g3BdeWUA[/wyt]
Lots of people have criticised the new WTC design for various reasons, but Ive always rather liked it.
Looks like pretenteous ass! Are they still calling that abomination the "Freedom Tower"? I give it two years before the towlies knock it down.
I've seen a couple of different segments/shows about the new building this week and, when complete, it's supposed to be able to withstand the impact of a 747 fully loaded with fuel.
Withstand as in not collapsing, or standing there pristine and sparkly without a single smudge after the smoke clears?
NOVA had a documentary a few nights ago on the new World Trade Centre buildings. The first 30 floors of each building are built like a bunker and could withstand multiple truck bombs. The only thing that would be damaged is the safety glass and people's nerves. The largest tower is 1776 feet high and is made of a special combination of steel and some new type of concrete that was developed specifically for these buildings. The emergency stairwells are also encased in six-foot thick steel-reinforced concrete and have negative air pressure so smoke doesn't get in. Lower Manhattan could get hit with a nuke and these buildings would probably be the only things left standing. They are marvels of modern safety. It's just too bad it took massive destruction and loss of life to figure this stuff out.
Positive air pressure. If it were negative, the smoke would try to find its way in. I saw the same show. I'm curious as to what they're going to do with the lower level since the prismatic glass plan didn't work out.
The two tallest towers should be the same size and shape as eachother, to preserve the concept of twin towers. As it is you've got one big tower, another almost-as-big one with a totally different shape, and a cluster of nondescript skyscrapers that blend in with the rest of lower Manhattan. They could have done better.
There is a theme to the new towers and their surroundings that was neither necessary nor even conceived of in the old towers. The original WTC had an overarching greyness. The plazas surrounding the buildings were mostly concrete with few outstanding features (except for some pretty blah sculpture). The buildings themselves, while architectural marvels at the time, were also grey. The lobbies were sort of impressive, but indistinguishable from any other high-rise built during the period. Once you got to the actual business floors, you had grey. Grey, grey, grey, not helped at all by the tiny little window spaces allowable between the steel struts. Now that the site itself has become iconic, there's a temptation to retroactively give those big grey monoliths in and of themselves some sort of sanctity. Please don't.
The Nova episode I watched the other night said that when the twin towers were completed, many New Yorkers said that they looked like the two "boxes" that the Empire State and Chrysler buildings were delivered in.
That's the way it is with all things, unfortunately. Flame retardant materials didn't get a lot of research until after the Apollo 1 fire. And even when these things are thought out, it takes an event of this magnitude to discover if they really work or not. The Pentagon was heavily reenforced after the OKC bombing, and on 9/11 those reenforcements made it difficult for rescue workers to get to the fire. So they had to redo the entire building in order to make it possible for rescue workers to get to people if there was another disaster. If anyone had proposed those features before 9/11, they would have been told that such things were "an unnecessary expense."
