images © Governor Cuomo

New York Governor Cuomo has just released images (albeit instagrams) of half of the new World Trade Center spire being installed today. The enormous metal antenna has travelled 1,500 miles by boat from Canada to lower Manhattan, and is now being hoisted up 104 stories (that’s more than 1,300 feet) to its final resting place on top of the tower. While only half of the structure will be put in place today, the entire topper will stand a staggering 408 feet tall, higher than many skyscrapers throughout the country. This towering addition will make the Word Trade Center 1,776 feet tall, reflecting the year America was granted independence. Read more!

more

All images: The Port Authority and the Durst Organization

New renderings of One World Trade Center were released earlier this week, the first to be made available to the public in five years. The images depict David Child’s 104-story tall tower soaring above the Lower Manhattan skyline, its glass-and-steel trunk incandescent with the hues of late-summer sunsets. But wait, there are some conspicuous changes afoot: namely, the skyscraper–officially the city’s tallest–is flanked by a series of erstwhile stone predecessors and not the ring of glass-clad structures originally offered six years ago. Foster + Partners’ 2 World Trade Center and Richard Rogers’ 3 World Trade Center have been excised from the plans, with only Fumihiko Maki’s 4 World Trade Center surviving the digital erasure.

Less obvious is the removal of the sculptural spire that crowned 1WTC in all design iterations up until this past May, when developers Durst Organization and the Port Authority announced its deletion citing feasibility concerns. The alteration, which removed the fiberglass cocoon that would have sheathed the tower’s antenna, would probably have gone unnoticed by both the press and public at large had it not undermined the project’s symbolic (and much-tooted) 1,776-foot height and, in so doing, jeopardized the project’s title as tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

Further changes include the modification to the structure’s 185-foot-tall base, whose original saw-tooth glass panels have been replaced with glass fins. The new facade is broken up into 13-foot high segments, each striated with horizontal louvers embedded with LEDs.

One World Trade Center is expected to be completed in early 2014 with 3-million-square-feet of office space–55% of which has already been spoken for. Condé Nast has leased 25 floors (1.2 million square feet) to serve as its headquarters, while Vantone China Center and the federal General Services Administration have collectively leased 460,000 square-feet. Click through for all of the renderings.

more

Image: The Associated Press, via the Daily

This afternoon, One World Trade Center will pass the Empire State Building as New York’s tallest skyscraper, reclaiming the city’s skyline and reviving the race for height that originated in Manhattan but which was resolved with the building of the World Trade Centerover 40 years ago. In just a few hours, workers are scheduled to install the first column of the 100th floor of the tower’s steel frame, which will rise 1,250 feet in the air, peaking just 21 feet over the crest of the Empire State Building’s observation deck.

Upon its expected completion in 2014, One World Trade Center will stand 1,776 feet and will become the country’s tallest structure, a title which currently belongs to Chicago’s 1,450 foot-tall Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower). Much jubilation greeted the announcement for many reasons–the director of the Port Authority giddily anticipated the views from the tower’s future observation platform, while architect David Childs welcomed the progression of construction as a sign towards the eventual rehabilitation of Lower Manhattan’s urban life. Yet, today’s events can hardly be seen as a milestone, says author and chronicler of New York’s skyscrapers Neal Bascomb, who told the NYTimes that the construction is “kind of like competing against a ghost.”

Photo: Michael Nagle, via NYTimes

more

St. Albans’ School, Marriot Hall by SOM, Washington, D.C.

SOM‘s been in the business for quite some time: formed at the closing of the 1930s and has run as an open-door office ever since, Skidmore Owings & Merrill first gained New York acclaim with the seminal Lever House, built in 1952 just across from the equally heralded Seagram Building. “Following the principles” of Mies van der Rohe, i.e. replicating the aesthetic of its neighbor, SOM made it really big, going onto build some of the world’s tallest buildings in cities all over, from the Sears Tower in Chicago to the world’s tallest structure the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Their next major project is 1 World Trade Center, now half-built and documented here with construction photos and renderings.

So it’s curious to see one of the firm’s more recent projects timidly poking out from amid a cluster of Gothic revivalist school buildings. Click through for more details:

more

The next few fair-weather months will be crucial for the hundreds of workers toiling on the site of 1 World Trade Center (née Freedom Tower). Scheduled for completion in 2013, the $3.1 billion tower will eventually rise to 105 stories (1,776 feet, remember?).

Intrepid Architizer writer Samuel Medina spent a few hours at the site this week, and captured these images of the fast-climbing behemoth. We filled in the blanks with the official renderings for comparison’s sake. The rising stump of the tower is now visible from many points around Manhattan — we’ve spotted it from the penthouse of HL23 on the High Line — and as these images attest, the sheer height of the first tower is still shocking.

Click through for a special sneak peek of the most controversial building in recent American history.

more

A juicy tidbit in today’s New York Times spreads the rumor that publishing grandaddy Condé Nast intends to pack up its now-cursed offices at 4 Times Square and decamp downtown. Way downtown.

“According to real estate executives who requested anonymity because the talks are secret, the publisher would take up as much as one million square feet in what is planned to be the country’s tallest office tower” — otherwise known as 1 World Trade Center, the skyscraper currently being built by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

The company moved into its current headquarters in 1999, establishing a presence in a formerly seedy neighborhood that has since been rebranded under the marketing umbrella of MTV, Disney, and ESPN. Moving to 1 World Trade would most likely bring a certain well-heeled luster to an area primarily known as a banking capital and the site of devastating event in New York’s history.

more