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September 12, 2001

The twin towers were built between 1966 and 1973 to the design of Minoru Yamasaki (deceased). To gain an elegant form to house the huge rentable area required, he chose to have two tall slender towers.

To make this structurally viable, Skilling, Helle, Christiansen, Robertson Structural Engineers gave the towers an external steel lattice that acted as a wind brace. This system was first used at the IBM building in Seattle. This system also eradicated the need for internal columns - these would have been next to impossible on buildings of this size due to the required size of the columns in the lower part of the structure. The lattice was shaped to appear as oversized window mullions, spaced at 39 inches. They really were huge, but felt reassuring for anyone with a sense of vertigo.

This was also the first building to employ the skylobby system - this is a highly efficient way of working the lifts to service the huge building population. Express lifts would take people to "skylobbies" from where there could ascend to their own "local level". This cut the number of lifts down, again increasing leasable are per floor to a percentage more like that of a conventional lowrise building.

In 1993, a massive bomb exploded in the World trade Center's underground carpark, killing six people and injuring 1042. The bomb failed to budge the buildings due to the exoskeletal structural system, which had little reliance on the foundations of the core.

On September 11, 2001, the twin towers and tower 7 were reduced to rubble after terrorists hijacked two american Boeing 767s and flew them into the towers. The tragedy still unfolds. Minoru Yamasaki Architects have this to say:

"MYA is shocked and outraged at this terrible tragedy. Mere words cannot express the depth of our grief and our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and there families."

statistics:
floor area: 40,000 sq. feet in each of the upper floors.Total 9,6000,000 square feet gross.
height: 110 floors, rising 412metres.
elevators: 99.
population: 50,000, plus 70,000 daily visitors.
tallest tower: until 1974 when Sears Tower overtook them.

by Peter Johns

internal links:

external links:

news:



BY THE WAY...
11.09.06 5 years - As we were reminded by the gatefold features in the weekend papers, we're coming up to five years of post 9/11-ness. At Ground Zero, things have been moving in slow motion. The final designs for the block were unveiled the other day - a dense pile of competing glass towers (by Maki, Foster, and Rogers), with SOM's clunky Freedom Tower emerging to a height of 1776 feet (about the only connection this tower has to Libeskind's design).

The New York Times has a very very long update here

How it was:


How it is:


Libeskind is happy in his role as Master Planner, though less than impressed with the Freedom Tower, according to a Colorado newspaper who tracked him down. "It's not my tower, and I wouldn't have designed it. I regret that building doesn't have the kind of strength, regret that my tower wasn't built. But I had no say in that."

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS 09.09.06

The dead-linky Butterpaper WTC page is still out there.
by peter - comments (0)

16.03.06 Ground 0 - Relations between developer Larry Silverstein and the New York Port Authority have hit a new low with construction of the new World Trade Centre due to begin next month.

OZ 16.03.06 (tip: SD)
by peter - comments (6331)



Daniel Libeskind - Breaking Ground - Adventures in Life and Architecture
Daniel's first memoir.

H/cover 288 pages, 2004.

AMAZON 60% OFF SALE PRICE
$US 11.18 + P/P ($US5-12)

(melbourne bookshops 02/05 $AU60)

 

27.02.03 Daniel Libeskind wins World Trade Centre competition. He reportedly said it was, "a life-changing experience." AGE 27.02.03 (tip: KMCF)

27.11.02 SOM's David Childs has designed a very erm... plain looking office block for the 7 WTC site in New York. It can be seen at DOMUS NEWS.

08.09.02 Don't Rebuild, Reimagine - A who's who of architects and urban designers fight back against the dull official plans for the WTC site. The link is to this morning's NY Times magazine where you'll find a HUGE trove of imagery and audio describing these new proposals for the site (and beyond). Worth the free registration process if you haven't done it yet.

29.05.02 The World Trade Centre clean up ends on Thursday, and after a commemoration, a new "viewing wall" will replace the existing plywood platforms and walls that seem to have become a shrine. Meanwhile, a 7 acre memorial seems to be the most popular long term option for the 13 acre site.

060402 Nature's fury. As the twin towers burnt, Hurricane Erin raged nearby. See both in this scary 700kb NASA image.




<<Down went not simply the leading architectural icon of global capital but the most concentrated symbol of human density - of the coming together that has, in one form or another, guided urbanism from its beginnings.>>
MICHAEL SORKIN IN METROPOLIS MAGAZINE JANUARY 2002

BIN LADEN VIDEO 12/01: (...Inaudible...) we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...inaudible...) due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.

WTC COMPETITION
response - 36 architects have designed something for the wtc site. You can view the entries here.
NEWSDAY

NEW YORK
towers of light - The Creative Time organisaton in New York explains all. Images and movie on site.
CREATIVE TIME

 
 
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