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I went to the press conference today where Larry Silverstein annouced that Norman Foster is going to design a new 65-story skyscraper at the WTC site. It was basically the usual speechifying, but there were a couple of things worth noting:
The politics notwithstanding, I have every faith in Foster to come up with something vastly better than the Freedom Tower (not that that would be difficult). This building will be almost as big (2.4 million square feet of office space compared to the Freedom Tower's 2.6 million square feet), and probably much more striking.
I'd wouldn't jump so fast or far on it yet. Foster's skills seems to rely on inspired clients -- I'm no fan of the Hearst Tower, and the project he was proposing just up Greenwich Street (the '5C Lot' adjacent to PS 234') wasn't all that impressive either.
Add to that the lack of clarity about the Freedom Mall, which this may well sit atop, and think about the envelope problem Foster is getting: a ton of site development issues spiralling the Freedomshot Tower costs up and up (the agreement hewn is still not going to do much for budget pressures across the site), and then the mandate to squeeze a lot of rentable floor space (a 190 fs footprint, minimum) in a much smaller building, there's not much room left for wow.
Posted by: 99 on December 16, 2005 02:58 AMgiven that all the site has planned (read: randomly dropped onto the site in steaming piles, that has yet to slide off) right now is a station, a banal tower, a semi-annual memorial and the victimall... wouldn't just about any development from any architect with a track record for doing a couple of good buildings be a big improvement?
at this point, even ellsworth kelly's big lawn proposal would be an improvement.
wouldn't just about any development from any architect with a track record for doing a couple of good buildings be a big improvement
Umm, doesn't this describe Calatrava, Childs and Libeskind (the jury will be out on Arad for a while)? And what have they accomplished?
Posted by: 99 on December 16, 2005 02:43 PMHow many good buildings does Childs have to his name? I think the jury's still out on 7WTC -- after going up to the 25th floor yesterday and seeing it from the inside, I'd class it as adequate, but certainly not great. I loved it when it was going up, but it looks much better from afar than it does from up close. Libeskind isn't designing a single building at the site, so he doesn't count. But yes, having major buildings by Foster and Calatrava next door to each other has to be a good thing -- although I, unlike 99, am a fan of the Hearst tower.
BTW, does anybody know anything about the Jenny Holzer installation at 7WTC? The idea is that when you walk in to the building, the acrylic wall behind the receptionists will be filled with LEDs, which will spell out Holtzerisms. But Silverstein yesterday was saying that they'd all be about motherhood and apple pie -- it was hard to tell if he was being serious or not. Has Holtzer agreed to make her work at the site be inoffensive to anyone?
Posted by: Felix on December 16, 2005 03:44 PMThat Libeskind is responsible for nothing is exactly my point.
I'm not arguing that Childs has many good buildings to his name, but Calatrava doesn't either, in my opinion (and, yes, I admit I've never been much for Foster either -- which is difficult since he has a much more responsible approach to large building construction that most others; but since an office tower is an officious type much of the time, I'd take FxFowle [a truly unfortunate rebranding] over Foster if I was looking for LEED certification).
If it helps, I generally find Holzer offensive all the time these days.
Posted by: 99 on December 16, 2005 04:03 PM
would you rather have the remaining pieces given consideration and designed by
a) foster
b) fosters ilk (pick whoever... it almost doesn't matter anymore)
c) nameless committe in a back office of the panynj
i think it is really less about whether or not you like foster and more about getting someone of a caliber to produce something befitting of nyc rather than the ass end of nj.
Posted by: geoff on December 16, 2005 07:30 PMThe ass end of NJ started when Pelli was hired to do the World Financial Center.
The temporary PATH station is still the best example of design since the attacks (realized or unrealized) and it was done by a nameless PANYNJ designer. But, no, I wouldn't trust them to design an office tower.
I'm just amazed that, once again, the "look over there" trick was tried, and, surely enough, sighs of relief abound. "This time, it will be better".
Or maybe this time they will kiss us after. Since that's about what were reduced to at this point.
Posted by: 99 on December 16, 2005 08:06 PMcould it get any lower than the propsed mall?
how can it be anything but better.
perhaps if a team of new urbanists swept in to create a 'main street' anchored by a 7-11... perhaps that would be worse.
mmmm... neo-classical slurpees.
It's 50+ FAR in the northeast corner. And no architect, Foster included, can make 50+ FAR -- 3 1/2 times (!) the standard maximum allowed by the New York City Zoning Resolution -- anything other than what it is: the worst urban environment in the history of the City.
For comparison, Time Warner is about 15, and Freedom Tower is about 30.
Posted by: JL on December 16, 2005 08:36 PMThanks for reporting on this, Felix. Your observation that Foster's tower will be "much more striking" than Childs's is further evidence of the unfortunate shift in emphasis from the empty central public space, which was the focus of Libeskind's plan, to the towers as positive elements.
Foster's involvement almost guarantees that the WTC will not be a total embarassment - he's certainly better than Calatrava or Childs - but it confirms that any hope of great architecture has disappeared (it seems the most "visionary" element we still dare to hope for is LEED certification). His work is always presentable, but its aestheticization of technology and structure is a banal modernist holdover. Perhaps it was too much to hope that a skyscraper project with the cultural incisiveness of "Memory Foundations" could ever be realized.
Posted by: Joseph on December 16, 2005 09:50 PMJL -- Would you care to extrapolate on how a FAR of 50 is so much worse than a FAR of 15 or 30? Urban environments are dense environments, pretty much by definition, no? Besides, FAR is nothing but a ratio: area of floorspace to area of land. You can increase or decrease the FAR of any tower more or less arbitrarily by increasing or decreasing the amount of land allotted to it. If you consider the Wedge of Light to be part of the parcel that 200 Greenwich is going to sit on, then the FAR plunges.
Posted by: Felix on December 17, 2005 07:27 AMperhaps if a team of new urbanists swept in to create a 'main street' anchored by a 7-11... perhaps that would be worse.mmmm... neo-classical slurpees.
Talk about gratuitous bs...
New Urbanism works from a set of principles, explained in the Charter, that go from the region to the block, the building and the street.
It's not only contextual (no Main Street in downtown Manhattan), but it's convinced the Institute of Transportation Engineers to adopt "contextual design," which means that if New York City followed new practice, the streets of Ground Zero would not be wider than surrounding streets.
And the 7/11 at 9/11? I've visited over 50 New Urban projects, and I've never seen a 7/11 in any of them.
You must be an architecture student.
Posted by: john on December 17, 2005 02:45 PMJohn, are the streets of Ground Zero going to be wider than surrounding streets? I, for one, never thought they would be. Hell, if all goes according to plan, a chunk of Cortlandt Street isn't even going to be a street at all -- it's going to be a pedestrian mall. But you're talking about Greenwich and Fulton, right? I know the towers need loading docks and stuff, but I was under the impression that Fulton Street isn't going to be any wider than it is elsewhere, and that Greenwich will certainly not be some kind of traffic-snarled thoroughfare.
Posted by: Felix on December 17, 2005 04:29 PMFelix -- The FAR is the basic measure of urban density, but of course the impact of any building on its urban environment is a complex function of a number of factors, the major ones being FAR; placement of bulk; and height and setbacks.
Tower 2's particular combination of these factors -- including an unprecedented 50+ FAR -- would result in...
- much less sky, daylighting and sunlighting;
- much more congested streets and sidewalks;
- much less free access to / egress from the building; and, on egress, much less comfortable and much less safe ìblendingî into the pedestrian rhythm of the City;
- much larger shadows;
- much poorer air quality; and
- more sympathetic wind regimens on the ground
...than any building in the history of the City.
This of all precincts should be the best urban environment in the history of the City. That would be the case even if the Port Authority WERE exempt from the New York City Zoning Resolution -- which it isn't.
But based on FARs ranging from mid 20s to mid 50s, along with placement of bulk on the site and height/setback parameters, the proposed plan for Ground Zero calls for the worst urban environment in the City's history.
The Zoning Resolution does not provide for "crediting" one parcel with open space from another, per your "Wedge of Light" suggestion. This, of course, is exactly what the LMDC attempts in its EIS claim of 11.5 FAR for the 16 acres -- as if the so-called "memorial quadrant" could be used to offset the outrageous FARs of the buildings in its plan.
But were Donald Trump to use the same argument to justify a proposal for a 500 FAR building on Central Park West, he would be laughed out of town, and rightly so.
The Resolution mandates that the only way an owner of adjacent blocks can calculate their FAR as if they were one superblock ó what the Resolution calls a "general large-scale development" ó is to abide by three conditions:
(1) Design them as a single zoning lot;
(2) Distribute the buildings on the site in such a way that they ìresult in a better site plan and a better relationship among buildings and open areas to adjacent streets [and] surrounding development...than would be possible without such distribution and will thus benefit both the occupants of the general large scale development, the neighborhood, and the City as a wholeî;
(3) ì[T]he distribution of floor area and location of buildings will not unduly increase the bulk or unduly obstruct access of light and air to the detriment of the occupants or users of buildings in the block or nearby blocks or of people using the public streets.î
The proposed plan does not meet (2) or (3), and the LMDC, by its own admission in the EIS, states that the plan was designed as -- and consists of -- "four separate blocks." (While a single block may include multiple zoning lots, according to the Resolution one zoning lot can never be more than one block.)
So they must be calculated as such.
Felix, the Zoning Resolution is the only mechanism we have for establishing, measuring, and enforcing minimum standards of urban livability for the people of New York City. The whole point of the Resolution is to guarantee the minimum quality of the public realm. The FAR is one of the primary tools it uses to do that.
The building that prompted the Zoning Resolution to be created in the first place -- the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway, owned by Larry Silverstein -- is 23 FAR.
This building would not qualify under the current Resolution, which, for a prevailingly commercial district like the World Trade Center, provides for a standard maximum of 15 FAR. This can be increased to a bonusable maximum of 18 FAR, by providing certain public amenities such as public open space.
The former World Trade Center was just under 18 FAR.
As I understand it, the densest intersection in Times Square averages about 35 FAR.
So all density is not created equal. In terms of how it feels on the street, there is an enormous difference between 15 and 30 and 50 FAR.
It is not an accident that the LMDC's marketing campaign for the proposed plan never included views from the street.
Posted by: JL on December 18, 2005 02:27 AMummmm...
do you want to explain where you are getting the metes & bounds of the tower 2 lot- or even the raw sf of the proposed tower 2?
or perhaps explain what exactly you are smoking?
Geoff --
All estimated FARs for the proposed plan are based on the Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement of April 2004.
In the absence of specific lot areas in the FGEIS, blocks were scanned from the Proposed Site Plan included with the FGEIS, then measured. Building areas were taken from tables S-1 and S-2 in the Executive Summary of the FGEIS.
Estimated FARs are conservative. Since the FGEIS, the proposed floor area for the 16 acres has increased from 8.4 million sf to a maximum 8.8 million sf; and and the proposed floor area for Tower 2 has increased from 2.2 million sf to 2.4 million sf.
Already, by the time of the June 2004 General Project Plan -- just two months after the April 2004 FGEIS -- the floor area for the 16 acres had expanded from 8.4 million sf to "approximately 8.5 to 8.8 million square feet."
The official notice for the IDA's public hearing on Larry Silverstein's Liberty Bond application strongly suggests that 8.8 is the real number. The notice describes the project as "one building of approximately 1,200,000 square feet to be located [on the Tower 5 site]" and "up to four office buildings, of up to approximately 8,800,000 square feet, to be located...within [a] site known as the World Trade Center."
Table S-2 of the FGEIS Executive Summary has Tower 2 at "2.2 million square feet of office space (65 floors)." According to the LMDC press release and last week's news accounts of the Foster commission, Tower 2 is holding steady at 65 floors, but the proposed floor area is now 2.4 million sf.
The additional 200,000 sf more than makes up for any margin of error in the 50+ FAR estimate. If anything, it puts the emphasis on the "+".
It is important to note that these FAR effects are a specific (and guaranteed) function of the proposed plan, which mandates using a partially restored street grid to create stock development parcels for four office buildings, with one parcel reserved for a memorial, to be segregated from all other development on the site.
It is possible to place 10.5 million sf on the 16 acres, and to leverage the site in such a way as to produce only 10 FAR.
John, "contextual design" is precisely not what is needed here. Like the original WTC, the new design must become a monument with a civic meaning of its own, not a simple reflection of the surrounding city.
Posted by: Joseph on December 20, 2005 04:05 AM