Image: Gary He / Insider Images via EPA

One World Trade Center was topped out on Friday with the addition of the final piece of its spire. At the overtly symbolic height of 1,776 feet high, give or take a few feet, the tower is now the highest in the US and third tallest in the world. This is, of course, pending the approval of the spire as an integral part of the building; otherwise, its height would be counted to the highest occupiable level of the building. Keep a look out for when it opens for business in 2014!

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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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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!

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One of New York City’s museum treasures, The Drawing Center, will finally re-open its doors tomorrow after a year-long renovation and a surprise last-minute clean-up due to last week’s Hurricane Sandy. The Center is the country’s only museum dedicated to drawings, both historical and contemporary. The 19th-century cast-iron facade adds to the character and sophistication of its famous SoHo neighborhood, standing as both a design feat and downtown staple. When the doors swing open tomorrow, visitors will see the $10 million renovation designed by Claire Weisz of WXY Architecture, which expands the museum’s exhibition space by 50%. Read more!

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This weekend marks the fourth season of the Architecture & Design Film Festival in New York! The amazing program this year will feature more than 25 films from 10 countries as well as panel discussions with some of the biggest names in architecture and filmmaking. From a documentary about the creation of the High Line to an opera inspired by the work of Louis Kahn, there’s something for everyone. Panel discussions range from the politics behind foreign embassy design to the emotional and economic architectural struggles that surround the new World Trade Center. The full schedule of events is available here. See you there!

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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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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

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The latest from the @WTCProgress feed: more stunning photos of Manhattan from above. We’re happy to see that the much-anticipated One World Trade Center will indeed have amazing views. More photos after the jump.

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Photo via.

It takes a lot to realize a work of architecture. Not only does one have to reconcile the distance between a theoretical idea and its concrete reality, but, seeing as architecture does not exist in a vacuum and, quite the opposite, has a sweeping radius of intangible effects, to build a building requires a skilled ballet through a political minefield. This could not be more evident than in Handel Architects’ recently unveiled National 9/11 Memorial.

Now that the memorial has been realized and officially opened to the public, the question then becomes: what will it take to get people to visit? As part of the New York Observer’s “Neverending Story” coverage of the construction at the World Trade Center, the journal remarked on how over 30% of people who have reserved tickets to visit the site have failed to show. The good news is that, despite the high percentage of flake-outs, tens of thousands of people are still visiting the site every week, and the territorial breed of downtown New Yorkers can now cool their jets about tourists cramping their ‘hood.

To show up thousands of people and prove that you can hold down an appointment, reserve your visitor’s pass here and visit the National 9/11 Memorial.

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An image from Christopher Anderson’s photo portfolio for the New Yorker shows the waterfalls at the WTC memorial.

It’s almost the tenth anniversary of 9/11, that infamous date when the media works itself up into a frenzy of self-referential naysaying that inevitably reaches its fever pitch when Glenn Beck cries (or when Bruce Springstein wails on the balcony of the penthouse of 8 Spruce Street, I guess?).

Presumably because the tenth anniversary marks the end of 9/11′s life as a “current event” and entrance into the annals of “history,” news stories this week have tended towards the documentarian. See, ten years means we’ve gained a critical distance, and critical distance is never better evinced than by cloaking your feelings with terms like “encyclopedia.”

You may not have hours to sift through all the coverage (thankfully), but we’ve come across much of it and linked to the collection below.

Exhaustive: New York Magazine’s Encyclopedia of 9/11

Dismal: The 9/11 Charity Fraud List, Thanks, 9/11!, Metropolis’ Truther Feature (since scrubbed, this is the cache link)

Media, Film, Sound: NY Mag’s Reader Photo Pool, Curbed’s post on Silverstein Properties’ Inception-esque Trailer,The New Yorker’s Photo Portfolio, Past Pixels: 9/11, Photography, and Remembrance, The Twin Towers in Film, Interactive Timeline of Newly Published Audio

Architectural: Remaking the World Trade Center, How the 9/11 Memorial Changed its Architect, WTC is Rapidly Rising, Architectural Record’s NY Coverage, Six Tech Advancements to Prevent Future Attacks

Good: The Last Column, Study: How 9/11 Changed Our Brains, David Remnick, Many Afghans Haven’t Heard of 9/11

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