Design by Committee

Slate's architecture critic (Witold Rybczynski) weighs in on the new Freedom Tower design.

The latest version of the Freedom Tower is the best yet.

The tower now has a square footprint (set well back from the street), and a graceful, tapering shape. The gimmicky open-air structure at the top of the tower (which was to have housed wind turbines, of all things) is gone, too. What Childs has produced instead is a simple obelisk, an appropriate shape for a building that is, at least in part, a memorial.

I do not agree with this. I noted earlier that I think that this new design is clunky and anything but graceful...but I'm certainly no critic.

Original Winning Libskind Design:

Compromise Libskind/Childs Design

New Childs Design


See my earlier Freedom Tower posts:
The (all new) Freedom Tower unveiled...
Addition to NY Skyline put on Hold

The (all-new) Freedom Tower unveiled...

The re-vamped Freedom Tower is being unveiled today. The New York Times has the story on the new tower here.

The tower is now a far cry from the design selected several years ago. (See my post on the original design here.)

At its base, the Freedom Tower would be 200 feet square, like the twin towers and the two voids that are to be created in their place as part of the Sept. 11 memorial. Mr. Childs said the new building's "most important role is being a marker in the sky of the memorial."

Here are a few renderings of what the Freedom Tower, and the NY skyline will look like...








To me, this is not as graceful as the original, but I'm not student of architecture, and I'm sure that solid base will be easier to justify. Click here for a viewpoint from Curbed.

Addition to NY Skyline put on Hold

Freedom Tower to be redesigned

I had not kept up with the commissioning of the tower and complex which will be built on the location of the former World Trade Center site. It appears today, however, that the plans have hit a snag and redesign will take several months or up to a year.

As I got to reading more about this project today, it has seen it's fair share of controversy and debate over the past year plus since the original "compromise" proposal was unveiled in December of 2003. There are two architects who are having to work together on the project, but they seem to have somewhat divergent visions. The architect who "won" the WTC site redesign project, Daniel Libeskind, proposed a tower 1776 feet high (to symbolize the founding of the United States) and an asymmetrical spire invoking outstretched arm of the Statute of Liberty. David Childs, an architecht co-commissioned on the project, has not been as sold on the off-centered-ness of the spire, and has included a "lattice" like cabled top, in homage to the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, including windmills which hope to harness the power of the winds to provide up to 20% of the building's power needs. The relationship between the two has been stormy, and it will be interesting to see what comes out of the new redesign project.

You can find more information on the Freedom Tower at:
Frontline
The City Review
and a slideshow of artist renderings of the "compromise" tower at CNN.

That slideshow contains this picture - which to me breathtakingly captures the tower's intended reference to the Statute of Liberty.