One World Trade Center is wrapping up, and the building’s glass is now rising along the upper mechanical floors. Though the antenna isn’t visible from the ground, that’s sure to change in the next few months as that part of the structure is completed as well.
Despite the progress on the upper levels of the tower, the base is still unfinished. Flaws in the original design mandated a reconfiguration of the base, so it’s taking forever to complete. It’s extremely sad that the most expensive building in the world (at almost $4 billion) wasn’t even designed correctly.
Instead of an iconic and well-designed structure that pays appropriate tribute to the former World Trade Center, New York is now graced with the largest monument to wasteful spending in the history of the world. $10 million was spent on glass that was never even used for the base, so it will be interesting to see if any more revelations about ridiculously bad judgments come to light once One World Trade is finished. Given the $4 billion price-tag, it seems quite likely that wasting $10 million on ‘bad’ glass is just the tip of the iceberg–and Durst’s value-engineering of the building certainly won’t make up the difference.
One World Trade Center looks much better than I suspected.