A Downtown Express article on a 2 World Trade Center presentation to Community Board 1 included a rendering I hadn’t seen before. It got me wondering if there were others, so I checked out Silverstein’s site. Were there ever! Remember: Because of its size (“80+ stories”) and position in the World Trade Center site, 2 World Trade Center is going to be the one you’ll see the most of from the north (along with the America’s Middle Finger™, of course). Most of the renderings, or maybe all of them, are by dbox, and they get bigger if you click on them.
The building from afar (including one looking down Hudson—as feared, the loveliest building in the complex, 4 World Trade Center, is totally blocked):
Note how wedged in the World Trade Center Transportation Hub is…. I suspect the Oculus will be less visible from up Church Street than it is now.
The lobby and various terraces and amenities (I skipped the Fox News studios):
This redesign is a horror.
Viewed from the north and northeast, it is a glass boxed caricature of the collapsing South Tower.
Viewed from the Memorial, is a sheer wall, as if trying to seperate itself from the memorial, as opposed to beckoning to it, as was the original design.
The original design, with the 4 diamonds, along with the 4 spires on 3WTC, were geographical beacons that, upon completion, were designed to point to where the Twin Towers once stood, regardless of location and distance viewed from.
This new design not only backhand slaps away that important design feature, it urinates on the memory of the lost.
The original design was a gift to the people of NYC as an aerial beacon to the 9/11 Memorial. Surely, it isn’t too late for them to re think the rooves of Towers 3 and 2, so that their Memorial facing facades can be returned to their original intent.