Posted on 09/14/2001 8:27:18 PM PDT by vannrox
World Trade Center |
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Architect | Minoru Yamasaki |
Location | New York, New York |
Date | 1970 to 1977. Demolished by terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 |
Building Type | skyscraper, commercial office tower |
Construction System | steel frame, glass curtain wall |
Climate | temperate |
Context | urban |
Style | Modern |
Notes | Yamasaki and Associates, with Emery Roth and Sons. 110 stories tall. |
Images | Building Images Photo, World Trade Center towers, from the Brooklyn Bridge. Howard Davis. cp: Howard Davis --> Photo, looking up, up, up! Lawrence A. Martin, PCD.3235.1012.0545.021. cp: 1993 Lawrence A. Martin --> Photo, exterior, across open space and fountain Lawrence A. Martin, PCD.3235.1012.0545.022. cp: 1993 Lawrence A. Martin --> Photo, lobby interior at mezzanine Lawrence A. Martin, PCD.3235.1012.0545.020. cp: 1993 Lawrence A. Martin --> Photo, looking east from the Hudson River to Manhattan and the World Trade Center towers, with U.S. flag. Manhattan Overviews Satellite Images courtesy of spaceimaging.com Great Buildings Nearby Posters |
Drawings | Site Plan Drawing Typical Floor Plan |
Discussion | World Trade Center Commentary "Yamasaki's commission to design the World Trade Center with the New York firm of Emery Roth and Sons...house(s) anyone and anything connected world trade. The program presented to Yamasaki, who was selected over a dozen other American architects, was quite explicit: twelve million square feet of floor area on a sixteen acre site, which also had to accommodate new facilities for the Hudson tubes and subway connectionsall with a budget of under $500 million. The vast space needs and limited site immediately implied a high-rise development that...make(s) the adjacent drama of Manhattan's business tip seem timid in comparison.... "After studying more than one hundred schemes in model form, Yamasaki decided on a two-tower development to contain the nine million square feet of office space. One tower became unreasonable in size and unwieldy structurally, yet several towers became too approximate for their size and 'looked too much like a housing project'; whereas two towers gave a reasonable office area on each floor, took advantage of the magnificent views, and allowed manageable structural system. The twin towers, with 110 floors rising 1,353 feet, ... (are) the tallest in the world. From observation decks at the top of the towers it...(is) possible to see 45 miles in every direction....One distinct advantage of the project's enormity is the architectural opportunity to advance the art of building. Yamasaki re-examined the skyscraper from the first principles, considering no ground so hallowed that it could not be questioned, especially in view of the potential of modern technology. The usual economic prohibition on 'custom-made' was out, as virtually anything made for the Center would automatically become a stock item. 'Economy is not in the sparseness of materials that we use,' said Yamasaki of his $350 million estimated cost, 'but in the advancement of technology, which is the real challenge.' "The structural system, deriving from the I.B.M. Building in Seattle, is impressively simple. The 208-foot wide facade is, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with columns on 39-inch centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning forces; the central core takes only the gravity loads of the building. A very light, economical structure results by keeping the wind bracing in the most efficient place, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall structures. Office spaces will have no interior columns. In the upper floors there is as much as 40,000 square feet of office space per floor. The floor construction is of prefabricated trussed steel, only 33 inches in depth, that spans the full 60 feet to the core, and also acts as a diaphragm to stiffen the outside wall against lateral buckling forces from wind-load pressures. "The other primary obstacle to be overcome in the skyscraper is the elevator system, and Yamasaki has shown himself equally imaginative here. A combination of express and local elevator banks, called a skylobby system, it is particularly efficient because it requires fewer elevator shaftsthus freeing approximately 75 percent of the total floor area for occupancy; had a conventional elevator arrangement been adopted, only approximately 50 percent would have been available. The building has three vertical zones; express elevators serve skylobbies at the forty-first and seventy-fourth floors; from these, and from the plaza level, four banks of local elevators carry passengers to each of the three zones. "From the outset, Yamasaki believed that there should be an open plaza from which one could appreciate the scale of the towers upon approach. There is little or no sense of scale, for instance, standing at the base of the Empire State Building. Yamasaki's plaza...(is) sheltered from the river winds and contained by five-story buildings which...house shops, exhibition pavilions and a 250-room hotel." "'The World Trade Center should,' Yamasaki said, 'because of its importance, become a living representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation his ability to find greatness.' " from Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. p194-195. The Creator's Words "There are a few very influential architects who sincerely believe that all buildings must be 'strong'. The word 'strong' in this context seems to connote 'powerful' that is, each building should be a monument to the virility of our society. These architects look with derision upon attempts to build a friendly, more gentle kind of building. The basis for their belief is that our culture is derived primarily from Europe, and that most of the important traditional examples of European architecture are monumental, reflecting the need of the state, church , or the feudal families the primary patrons of these buildings to awe and impress the masses. This is incongruous today. Although it is inevitable for architects who admire these great monumental buildings of Europe to strive for the quality most evident in them grandeur, the elements of mysticism and power, basic to cathedrals and palaces, are also incongruous today, because the buildings we build for our times are for a totally different purpose." Minoru Yamasaki. from Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. p186. Building Details 110 stories, 1353 feet (412 meters) tall (by some sources, one tower was 1368 feet, the other 1362) The site is 16 acres in lower Manhattan, with buildings grouped around a five acre central plaza. The site is bounded by Vesey Street on the north, Church Street on the east, Liberty Street on the south, and West Street on the west, about three blocks north of the New York Stock Exchange. Observation deck, South Tower, WTC 2, floor 107 (summer hours 9:30am to 11:30pm). On Friday, February 26, 1993, a massive terrorist bomb was exploded in the Center's public parking garage, but the Towers survived. World Trade Center Disaster Tuesday, September 11, 2001 On Tuesday, One World Trade Center, the north tower, was hit by a hijacked 767 commercial jet airplane at 8:45am New York time. Two World Trade Center, the south tower, was hit by another similar hijacked jet at 9:03am. (In separate but related attacks, the Pentagon building near Washington D.C. was hit by a hijacked 757 at 9:43am, and at 10:10am, a fourth hijacked jetliner crashed in Pennsylvania.) The south tower, WTC 2, which had been hit second, was the first to suffer a complete structural collapse at 10:05am. The north tower, WTC 1, then also collapsed at 10:30am. WTC 7, a substantial 47 story office building in its own right, built in 1987, caught fire and later in the afternoon also collapsed. As of Friday evening, possible collapse of other nearby buildings was feared, including WTC 6, the U.S Customs House to the north; WTC 3, the 22 story Marriot World Trade Center hotel just west of Tower Two; WTC 4 and 5, the Plaza Buildings to the east; and One Liberty Plaza, a 54 floor, 743' tall building across Church Street to the east. Some of these may already have collapsed, with the fact perhaps going unnoticed or at least unreported amidst the general devastation of the site.
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Resources | Sources on World Trade Center "World Trade Center Destroyed", cover page editorial, by Kevin Matthews and B.J. Novitski with Michael Crosbie, ArchitectureWeek No. 66, 2001.0912, pN1.1. AIA Guide to New York City. NA 735.N5 A78 1988. p48-49. Manhattan Architecture. NA 735.N5B47 1988. p18, 19, 36, 37, 96-99. Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. New York: Walker and Company, 1966. LC 66-22504. IBSN 0442017510. discussion p186, 194-195. Out of print, but you can request a search for this book at Amazon.com Lawrence A. Martin, University of Oregon. Slides from photographer's collection, September 1993. PCD.3235.1012.0545.020. PCD.3235.1012.0545.022. PCD.3235.1012.0545.021. Minoura Yamasaki. A Life in Architecture. New York: Weatherhill, 1979. NA737.Y3A2 1979. ISBN 0-8348-0136-1. LC 79-11561. drawing of site plan, p119. drawing of ground plan of a tower, p118. Find books about World Trade Center Search the RIBA architecture library catalog for more references. |
Web Resources | Links on World Trade Center World Trade Center The official Port Authority web site, including crisis info. Search the web for World Trade Center We appreciate your suggestions for links about World Trade Center. |
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hole_n_one ... Years ago, I studied how these buildings were designed: state of the art at the time. My confusion in seeing the fascade ... is the level of, and amount of debris. Considering the amount of materials used to construct the building, there HAS TO BE MORE DEBRIS ... unless the building vaporized. I think it must have.
That seems to be the general consensus......
that's what it looked like on T.V.......it simply disintergrated before our eyes.
Type to:WTCgraphics in the search box.
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