Freedom Tower will be world's safest skyscraper
The proposed Freedom Tower at the former World Trade Centre site, redesigned to address security concerns, will lose the distinctive asymmetrical shape envisioned in earlier plans but will be the world’s strongest and safest high-rise building, officials said today.
The redesigned tower will be straighter and squarer, will rise from a base clad in shimmering metal chosen for beauty and blast-resistance and will be topped with an illuminated spire.
The details are part of a redesign described today for the soaring skyscraper in lower Manhattan that has been delayed by bureaucratic squabbling.
The new design for the 1,776ft tower is meant to make it more resistant to car bombs. The building will now be 90ft – instead of 25ft – from West Street, the major north-south thoroughfare along the Hudson River.
Its main roof will be the same height as the fallen World Trade Centre twin towers.
“In a subtle but important way, this building recalls … those buildings that we lost,” lead architect David Childs said at a news conference.
The tower’s cubic base will be clad in luminous materials – probably a combination of stainless steel and titanium – that will be shimmering and light-reflective as well as blast-resistant, according to a description of the redesign by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.
As in the original design, the structure outlined in the latest plan exceeds city fire code requirements, and will have biological and chemical filters in its air supply system.
It also has the original design’s extra-wide emergency stairs, a dedicated staircase just for firefighters, enhanced elevators and “areas of refuge” on each floor. Stairs, communications, sprinklers and elevators will be encased in 3ft-thick walls.
The tower will be capped with a mast incorporating an antenna, meant to suggest the torch of the Statue of Liberty.
The plan for rebuilding the 16-acre site devastated by the September 11, 2001, attack retains 2.6 million sqft of office space and an observation deck. Sixty-nine office floors will sit atop a 200ft-high reinforced base.
New York Governor George Pataki laid the tower’s cornerstone on July 4, 2004, but the past year has seen more fighting than progress by the agencies and individuals with roles in the site’s rebuilding.
Officials have said the concerns have probably delayed the tower’s original 2009 ribbon-cutting, and the revised plan now calls for it to be ready for occupancy in 2010.
