World Trade Center Keeps Building, 20 Years On

摘要

ON THE 20TH anniversary of 9/11, the former site of terror and rubble is now a solemn epitaph for those who perished, but also a symbol of urban renewal. The 16-acre site owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, however, is no longer a crowded, dusty construction zone with road closures, trucks, and cranes, although a few architecture projects are still ongoing. In two decades, the area has transformed into a walkable downtown space featuring One World Trade, the tallest tower in the Western Hemisphere, and an eye-catching transportation and retail hub, the Oculus. Although much of Studio Libeskind's master plan has changed over the years, the basic idea-to create a memorial to the 9/11 tragedy and to reshape lower Manhattan into both a residential and commercial center-largely remains the same, according to Dara McQuillan, chief marketing and communications officer at Silverstein Properties, a major developer of the World Trade Center (WTC) site. By 2006, the company finished constructing 7 WTC, a $700 million, 52-story building (designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill) that was the first office building in the city to be LEED Gold certified. On the 10th anniversary, the memorial park and reflection pools, by Michael Arad and Peter Walker of PWP Landscape Architecture, were built. Then came the $1.7 billion 4 WTC (Fumihiko Maki), the $3.9 billion Oculus (Santiago Calatrava), followed by Liberty Park (Joseph E. Brown, a landscape architect and former chief innovation officer at AECOM), the $2.7 billion 3 WTC (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners), and the memorial museum, with its glazed entry pavilion (David Brody Bond and Snohetta).