Construction Update: One World Trade Center

Almost all of the slatted glass around One World Trade Center’s upper mechanical floors is now up, and only a few floors remain until the tower’s cladding will been finished. Even the base facade is now progressing, with the first ‘shatter-proof‘ glass going in on the tower’s southern side.

One World Trade Center’s antenna is also rising, which is unfortunate because of how ugly it is. The barbed protrusionits function and purpose are completely independent of the tower’s aesthetics, and as such it is not a spireis roughly halfway complete. Value-engineering is less appropriate when the tower in question will supposedly be a national icon, visible to millions of New Yorkers every day.

One World Trade Center
One World Trade Center
One World Trade Center
One World Trade Center
One World Trade Center base cladding
One World Trade Center base cladding begins
One World Trade Center
One World Trade Center

One World Trade Center
One World Trade Center, view from Fulton Street

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5 Comments on "Construction Update: One World Trade Center"

  1. The spire won’t be barbed when it is done, those are platforms used to put subsequent pieces in place and will be removed.

  2. Unfortunately you are incorrect–it appears some of the ‘barbs’ will be removed but the final antenna will indeed be punctuated by platforms that make it appear barbed. http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=123628&page=1483

  3. “value engineering” – isn’t that a euphemism for “bait and switch”?

  4. Indeed it is. Sad that it happened to a supposed ‘national landmark’.

  5. Am I the only one who thinks the spire left raw is terrific? As first planned, the mast was just a tube in the sky, which made 1 WTC look like a giant hypodermic needle set on end. But with the sheath omitted to expose the steel framing and graduated platforms, the spire functions as a futuristic finial, a dramatic ornament of light-and-shadow atop an otherwise minimalist building. Here form really does follow function. Once 1 WTC is complete, I predict that its articulated mast will seem as necessary to its overall design as the mast on the Empire State Building (which was not in the architect’s original plan).

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