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Itâs going to be great but its weird why they havenât opened it yet. Just put a small sidewalk shed on the side that directly faces the PAC
Iâm confused too. Only cladding left on that side is for the base. So I canât imagine theyâd be doing too much heavy crane work there. Maybe by the time summer or fall gets here work should be progressed enough for them to open it. I canât imagine them waiting until the arts center opens but who knows.
This could be us but you playingâŚ
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Couldnât they re-clad the spire? And the communication rings on the roof? That would make this building much much taller and more impressive.
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I was under the impression that the communication ring will eventually look like the rendering as more dishes are put on it. Although I always wondered how it would look so uniform.
I tried looking up more info but instead came across this:
âThe crown of One WTC is a 408-foot spire â consisting of a mast and a communication platform ring. At night, a beacon at the top sends out a horizontal light beam, which can be seen from miles away.â
https://www.wtc.com/about/buildings/1-world-trade-center
Then I just got sad at how they donât even care about the broken beacon. They definitely arenât cladding the spire. Which is especially sad considering how much thought went into it:
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I think it symbolizes this entire redevelopment, just as messed up as the rest of it.
Durst ruined this tower. Oh well. It was bad design anyway. Should have been 110 floors of real office space.
Lamest tower in NY.
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It doesnât look like theyâre interested in spending a single dime extra on 1 WTC lol, donât get your hopes up for any improvements.
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In my opinion the Trade Center was destroyed and died on 9/11. This new complex is nice but it could never hold a candle to what was.
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Yep. Those buildings were pure, dominating, merciless power.
These new buildings are like little brother.
At least we have the rest of the city that has only gotten better.
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On what measure? The original complex wasnât exactly a masterpiece. The Twins grow on you, but they never were really beautiful. (Well, the bottom had nice stylingâs which 175 Parkâs base has pillars reminiscent of.)
The other buildings were meh as far as I can tell. Iâll need to look more closely at those ones.
I doubt the transit connections were better.
An argument could be made for the plaza.
Now thatâs not to say the mess of a redevelopment is too be ignored, especially the screwed up 1 WTC and 2 WTC. But to say the entire complex, including the amazing ground level, doesnât hold a candle is quite the claim.
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Agreed. The value engineering and the disastrous redevelopment is disappointing, but what we ended up with is still way better looking than dirty aluminum blocks with a giant windswept plaza imo. I feel like for every screwup thatâs happened with the new siteâs development, the original proposal is equidistant from what we had before.
For example, I see the new WTC7 as a very boring building. Sure it complements 1WTC nicely and is good as part of the bigger picture, but I donât see it as anything special as a standalone building. But thatâs not to say that itâs a regression from the original 7 which was a very awkwardly designed monster of a building that sealed Greenwich off from the rest of downtown.
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I remembered looking up at the twin towers as a kid, they were the biggest things Iâd ever seen. They especially looked amazing at night time with the hundreds of lit floors. They became icons, appearing in Superman and King Kong movies. They also represented economic might and power. I highly doubt the new WTC will ever achieve that status, but time will tell.
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None of the original WTC architecture was great. The twins were a bit boring. But the worst part was the elevated plaza that cut the city off and destroyed standard street and pedestrian circulation. The street part has only been partially corrected, especially with all of the security limitations. And the new buildings are OK but not inspired. The new 1 WTC especially leaves much to be desired. Too many planning demands and compromises together with some bad financial planning and value engineering created too many limitations for anything great to emerge from the chaos after 9/11. It truly is a shame, as so many folks have said on this thread.
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^ I wonât deny that. tjr101
But anyway back to the tower at hand. While I would really love for it to be clad and it would make it like 10x better, I donât understand the reason why it was left a spire anyway. What was the point? Why couldnât they just continue the glass exterior up to the tip? Like in the original redevelopment proposal
I much prefer Kong climb 175 Park 
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I think the beacon was doomed because of design flaws. Canât remember where I read it but I believe they scuttled it because it was too vulnerable to lightning strikes. It would have continued to get shorted out. Plain LEDs are ubiquitous now (like One V) and less finicky, but will not project that kind of directed light. I believe what happened to the beacon is they left the LED arrays but removed the mirroring apparatus that rotated.
On a separate note, looks like the plaza is opening up â fence being removed today:
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