![freedom tower freedom tower](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/2/nyc-freedom-tower-from-brooklyn-bridge-virginia-giblin.jpg)
The tower, to be a centerpiece of the rebuilding plan for the World Trade Center site, is to rise 1,776 feet - a nod to the year the United States declared its independence. It's a feat of numerology, a totem clung to by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Port Authority, and Larry Silverstein through half a dozen designs, two architects, several public squabbles and countless delays.Īnd every time the wind blows, or it gets hot out, or the ground shifts imperceptibly, it gets less true.NEW YORK (CNN) - The Freedom Tower to be built at the site of the devastated World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan is still planned as the world's tallest building, according to a revised model unveiled Friday by the architects collaborating on its design. The mythic height 1,776 feet isn't just a "close enough" figure.
![freedom tower freedom tower](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/70/78/b1/7078b1c0949243ae34018f32bdc62775.jpg)
If you're going to tell everyone that your new office building rises one foot for every year since the birth of Christ to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, so better to really celebrate Freedom, it better do so. Of course the building moves under both wind load and temperature as well as the variable gravity load inside (called live load), but the height of any structure is usually stated with it being understood that the wind is not blowing and the temperature is some arbitrary value.īut when you wed yourself to symbolism so glib and cloying as that- you have to follow through. Robert Sliman, a structural engineer, told me I was being "picky": Of course, we're not being entirely fair. Even assuming that the designers had done extensive calculation, "a one-foot metric is likely impossible for a structure 1,776 feet tall." "Masts are often designed to allow sway and contraction and expansion to reduce stresses due to rigidity," architect (and co-proprietor of the inspirational web site Cryptome) John Young told us. Not only will it settle as actual people move in and furnish their offices, the mast itself is likely to change length. If the CTBUH insists on doing its measurements from "the lowest, significant, open-air, pedestrian entrance," as it says on its website, the height would be either 1,779 feet or 1,787 feet, depending on the placement of the beacon on top of the mast.Īnd that's not even considering fluctuations in the building itself. The 1,776-foot figure bandied about by developers is based on measurements from the center of the building ("we had to pick something," designers told The Observer in 2011). What's left is something closer to an antenna than a spire-though CTBUH still hasn't made its ruling (emails to the council went unreturned). But in May, to save money, the steel-triangle design was scrapped (over the objections of the architects). Which point on the ground do you use as your basis? Which point on the structure to you call the top? The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), the world authority on skyscraper height, has three different metrics: "Height to the Architectural Top," "Highest Occupied Floor," and "Height to Tip." The first of these is the standard by which skyscrapers are judged, and by which One World Trade Center would stake its claim as, at 1,776 feet, "the highest building in the western hemisphere."īut where is its architectural top? According to CTBUH, "architectural top" includes "spires," but not "antennae, signage, flag poles or other functional-technical equipment." Until last year, the designs called for a mast that was fairly unambiguously a spire-a seven-meter wide, architecturally designed element that was clearly part of the building.
![freedom tower freedom tower](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zYhub8gEhEM/Ui5NiwWdbRI/AAAAAAAAA_Q/Nr5rvQxDfTw/s1600/freedom_tower.jpg)
Measuring the height of a building presents a few problems.
![freedom tower freedom tower](https://d3e1m60ptf1oym.cloudfront.net/6edd4d03-d79d-4933-b58f-4380d99b03f5/2014_0725_1327_xgaplus.jpg)
Yesterday, with the raising of its mast, One World Trade Center-the "Freedom Tower"-symbolically kicked bin Laden's dead ass by reaching a soaring, magnificent 1,776 feet into the sky.