Workers are almost finished installing the last of the glass cladding to 1 WTC. Yesterday, the WTCProgress Twitter tweeted a new photo that revealed the bluish glazing in all its glory. “One WTC’s curtain wall is now 90 percent complete between floors 90 and 100,” the tweet read. Work on the tower’s controversial spire is concurrently being done, according to a message dated March 25, which stated: “As of today 12 pieces of One WTC’s spire are installed weighing 582.9 tons which is approximately 283 cars.” You can see the beginning of the spire nestled just beneath the crane installed at the top of the budding skyscraper — already New York’s tallest structure.

Below is a side-by-side comparison of 1 WTC in its current state and what it will look like once completed (in 2014).

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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.

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The New World Trade Center from Piranha Nyc on Vimeo.

Commissioned by Silverstein properties for visual effects company Piranha NYC, “The New World Trade Center” visualizes the full restoration of Lower Manhattan, when Ground Zero ceases to be a vast construction site, but instead, the active urban corridor it is hoped to become. The film, which was presented a couple of weeks back for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, begins with high-res video capturing the choreography of the on-going construction: workers raise and lower steel beams, pour concrete, and man machines–all set to jittery bleeps and paranoiac strings ostensibly pinched from the soundtrack of a Bourne film. This real footage gives way to a virtual landscape, with acrobatic flybys over the fully planted WTC Memorial Site and park and up the sides of the four WTC towers. The completion of the site unfolds before your eyes with an impressive level of photographic realism and clarity that seamlessly appends the new towers to the existing skyline. Cue the crescendo!

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Daniel Libeskind, A New World Trade Center

In the months following the 9/11 attacks, an array of competitions, conferences, and initiatives was launched to consider the appropriateness and terms of rebuilding Ground Zero.When, in mid-2002, the Lower Manhattan Development Company (LMDC) released an abysmal set of six initial plans for a new World Trade Center, a reactionary wave of architects entered the fray, each with their own vision to rehabilitate and transform Ground Zero into a thriving urban center once more. Their plans, however loose or conceptual they may have been, promised to offer the city something more than what it would receive a decade later–Daniel Libeskind’s diluted masterplan for a series of equally bland towers (Libeskind’s first ideas for a tower at Ground Zero above). Explore the alternatives to 2011′s Ground Zero.

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The projected vision for the World Trade Center, estimated completion: 2020

Architecture may have reached its cultural apotheosis with the launch of the competition to design and develop Ground Zero in early 2002.

This marked the rare point when architecture, in an attempt to fully assert its potential, insinuated itself in the political-and-capital vortex which would either see it through or mangle it beyond repair. Almost a decade after the designs of the seven finalists were revealed, and after Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg chose Daniel Libeskind’s winning proposal, Ground Zero is still a work-in-progress. The 16-acre site is pockmarked with structures at various point of completion: WTC 1 and WTC 4 are nearly half-completed, with construction yet to begin on Towers 2 and 4, while the World Trade Center Site Memorial will open on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

Success story, failure, or reality check? Or, perhaps, a tribute to the (soul-crushing) power of compromise? As the tenth anniversary of the tragedy approaches, we charted the remaking of the World Trade Center.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects announced eight new International Fellows yesterday. Among them are the three founders of MVRDV, Craig Dykers of Snohetta, and Ma Yansong of MAD. MVRDV’s fellowship arrives just as their first UK project (the Balancing Barn, which visitors can now rent as part of the Living Architecture project) is nearing completion. [via RIBA]

Tomorrow Studi0-X launches a new book — “The Studio-X New York Guide to Liberating New Forms of Conversation” (TIP #1: SHORTER TITLES) — at Storefront for Art and Architecture. The book (designed by MTWTF) is organized as a instruction manual — a guide, dictionary, and list of tips for instigating dialog within a community. The launch tomorrow night is being staged as a cabaret and we’re looking forward to seeing “David Benjamin telecommunicating, Eva Franch emceeing, and Mitch McEwen rapping.” [via Storefront]

Sir Norman Foster unveiled his stadium scheme for Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 World Cup. Formally, it seems like a little bit of a camel to us, but we really do like the field of solar canopies surrounding the stadium. [via Inhabitat]

Remember what we said the other day about Beekman Tower being the only Gehry project in New York that worked out? Well, we were wrong: yesterday afternoon saw the announcment that his huge Ground Zero performing arts center is back on. The $450 million project now has $150 million in funding -though it remains to be seen how the other $300 million will be procured. [via the NY Observer]

After the jump, video of the Standard Hotel being used as a canvas for light and sound, in a piece created by Mother New York for Target. Branding, event design, etc. etc. etc. Reminds us of Graffiti Research Lab’s (more complicated, reactive) Interactive Architecture.

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If architecture were a live TV show, it would probably be cancelled in two weeks.

Still, there is something fascinating about watching the buildings expand in real time. It’s a shame that we don’t have cameras on buildings all the time… or do we? Enter: the webcam.

Filming buildings live and in action does have its precedents: the classic William Whyte film Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, which documented plaza life outside of New York’s Seagram Building and other public spaces; Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964), an uninterrupted filming of New York City’s Empire State Building at night, with no narration or gimmicks.

But those of us longing to see breathing, growing buildings can look in the corners of the ‘net in what are known as webcams.  There is nothing like spending an afternoon watching a live webcam and thinking to yourself with a twinge of superiority, “Check out the girders. Don’t hit that guy.” Or watch as the construction of the long-delayed World Trade Center unfolds (see below).

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