Many declared the skyscraper dead in the wake of September 11. A quick tour d’horizon, however, shows that the past decade has been the most productive ever in terms of tall buildings: more skyscrapers have been built since 2001 than were built in the century preceding it. That abundance of office space determined the fortunes of the four skyscrapers at the World Trade Center, and, in the case of Two and Three World Trade Center, their construction schedules as well. The Manhattan market for large, state-of-the-art office buildings also has reorganized itself by price rather than an allegiance to a particular geography, with real estate forces vying in three locations—downtown, around Grand Central, and west of Penn Station.
One World Trade Center, the locus of downtown development, has a timeless design that, untethered from trends, will serve its tenants and the city for decades to come. It is all too easy to miss the subtleties of its understated but nuanced profile. For all of its dominant physical presence, much unseen is also here. The notion of restraint in an urban setting is lost in today’s “experience economy,” which is marked by exuberant, highly individualistic architectural statements. Ultimately, One is a response to how the individual perceives it rather than a statement about itself. Its simplicity emphasizes and encourages individual engagement. In contrast, the original towers deflected both engagement and reflection. It is also true that the new tower has been erected at a time when many do not want to put any effort into such encounters, preferring the quick visual equivalent of Instagram, rather than grappling with simplicity, which takes commitment and time.
Beyond aesthetics, the building had to resolve a broad spectrum of structural, political, and financial issues, some of which still have not been made public. Much like their tower, which cloaks its audacity behind an elegant façade, the architects have chosen not to defend the building from its critics. That urbane reserve is a hallmark of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, but, more to the point, the architects don’t believe it needs defending. David Childs passionately believes in the “inevitability” of its design. He’s mum on the compromises that had to be made, several of which, one suspects, were excruciating.
Even before it opened, the tower’s design was widely criticized. Critics damned it as compromised or, at best, conservative, calling it “monomaniacal,” “a shyscraper,” “a shell of the original vision,” “a prime specimen of capitalist realism,” “a bold but flawed giant” that was “only worthy of an indifferent shrug.” This minute sampling does not begin to suggest the strafing of every person, company, and organization responsible for the tower, including its designers, its developers, the Port Authority, and the public, with its omnipresent fears and questionable taste. As James Joyce famously said in a different context, “Here comes everybody.”
Architects, notably, have been more sparing in their criticism, and, in that highly competitive field, not necessarily because of professional courtesy. Most firms would have jumped for a shot at this commission. Through grim experience, they have some inkling of what it took to negotiate the morass, more than a decade long, of red tape, design changes, delays upon delays, and the inevitable restrictions of time and money. This in addition to responding to seemingly unquenchable expectations and meeting the tower’s complex structural demands and unprecedented (literally, as in, never done before) security parameters.
One World Trade Center and every other structure on the site hold our impossible wish: to have back everyone who was lost on September 11. Of all the challenges that the World Trade Center has had to face, perhaps the biggest one is exorcising the ghosts of the structures that it replaced. The site is so vested with memories, sorrow, and ambition that no building could meet the layers of expectation laid on it. Heated debates about the choices made continue. The World Trade Center is too new, still a work in progress, to judge its ultimate coherence as a project, though without a doubt a new downtown is emerging. New York, as is its nature, has already turned its attention to other buildings and concerns, shifting the hard spotlight away from the Trade Center. Now it will be free to grow into itself. Two World Trade Center, originally designed by Foster + Partners, will be designed by Bjarke Ingels Group. Plans to build a fifth tower just south of Liberty Street, where the Deutsche Bank Building once stood, are in flux. Also still to come is a performing arts center. Such a place, free to focus on creativity unencumbered by commercial demands, will provide the last piece of this noble puzzle.