FOUR WORLD TRADE CENTER

Time magazine partnered with GigaPan in 2013 to create a panoramic photograph from the top of One World Trade Center. A gigapixel in size, the massive image captures views as far as the eye can see. Perhaps the most remarkable sight is hidden in plain view: Four World Trade Center, a 72-story skyscraper, seems to disappear in the photo. Rather than tout its presence, the self-effacing glass tower melts into the sky, reflecting clouds and surrounding buildings. In the photo, the color of the tower is midnight blue, but it is chameleon-like, changing from azure to milky white depending on the weather. Simultaneously set apart from and engaged with the site, the tower arose from Japanese design principles that shaped its quintessential character.

Four World Trade Center was the first new building completed at the World Trade Center, one of five skyscrapers that will eventually encircle the memorial plaza. Designed by the architectural master Fumihiko Maki, the 2013 tower embodies oku, a concept of space that Japanese builders have cultivated since ancient times. Rooted in Zen Buddhism, particularly with respect to the transience of all things, oku connotes the innermost depth of a building or a place, referring less to measurable distances than to metaphysical and psychological dimensions. Here, oku is conjured repeatedly yet subtly in a series of architectural decisions that invite the individual to engage ever more deeply with the building, the site’s recent history, and the primeval past.

The first glimmer of oku is apparent from a distance, where the tower seems to disappear into the clouds. When Maki and architect Gary Kamemoto, a director at Maki’s firm, saw Ground Zero in 2002, it was still a smoldering pit. Their emotional response to the magnitude of the attacks made them wonder if they should build on the site at all, a reaction that would shape their eventual design. Consequently, when Silverstein Properties commissioned the firm in 2006 to design the tower, Kamemoto said they knew it had to have a “quality beyond that of a commercial high-rise building.… Every single decision always came to this point: that the building should conjure some sense of quietness, serenity, and dignity. We felt that we might be able to make a very strong, positive contribution here to better the place.”

It is a three-part invention: the tower’s transparent glass base is topped by a parallelogram-shaped body that angles inward at the 57th floor and then rises as a trapezoidal tower. Clad in 11,000 curtain wall units, each consisting of a 5´× 13´6˝ high lite with a concealed spandrel section, the tower appears to be made of a single sheet of uninterrupted glass. The lite’s outer layer is low-iron glass, which doesn’t impart the bluish or greenish tint that a lesser-grade glass would, further emphasizing the tower’s ephemerality. Two façade corners, notched from sidewalk to roof, create a shadow that subtly animates the glass envelope.

At midpoint, the tower steps back and points directly at One World Trade Center in a gesture of respect. Located on a corner, diagonally across from One, the tower also marks the place where Libeskind’s master plan pivots west. To accentuate this rotation, the designers cut back the trapezoidal floor plate at the 57th-floor terrace. Possibly the best place to see One World Trade Center is from that terrace. If you can tear yourself away from the view and turn around, you also will see One reflected in Four’s glass façade, another allusion to realities that extend beyond the physical plane.

In deference to the memorial, the designers eliminated the mechanical louvers, and the noise they emit, on Greenwich Street and placed them instead on the north, south, and east façades. The engineers had to “do gymnastics to get everything off the west face.… We were focused on the impression of the building as it appeared from memorial park. We didn’t want to have the mechanical systems, the everyday functions of exhaust and intake, visible on the west façade. We wanted the building to present itself with a certain kind of dignity. Breaking up the surface with louvers would detract from that expression.”

Convinced that public places catalyze human connection, Maki emphasizes them in his designs. He has long been a proponent of the increasingly widespread belief that sensitively conceived and beautifully executed designs are not merely “high cultural icing,” but a way of caring for others. Designs that are visually delightful, scaled to human proportions, and environmentally sound convey concern for the stranger—the basis of ethical behavior. This life-affirming urbanism is seen in the many gestures of hospitality the tower makes to the wider city. It is reticent yet sociable, contributing to the World Trade Center ensemble while maintaining an individual presence.

Historically, most western city centers were clearly demarcated by a church, municipal buildings, or a rail station. The western-centric model emphasizes the vertical axis between heaven and earth, a sensibility that birthed tall buildings—first cathedrals and, eventually, skyscrapers. Such buildings are beyond human scale and derive a good part of their drama and meaning from that very dissonance in scale. In contrast, cities shaped by oku are multilayered compositions with a more passive, flexible determination of boundaries. Their drama is found not in climactic confrontation but in an unfolding realization. Japanese culture privileges these inner depths, beyond that which can be seen. Maki compares this sensibility to peeling away the layers of an onion or opening a package that is wrapped with many different layers, an art form in Japan. Slowly unwrapping an artfully presented package to uncover the treat inside can be as momentous and enjoyable as the treat itself; the journey is as important as the final destination.

The journey into the tower was conceived in four dimensions: the three-dimensional, physical journey from the 9/11 Memorial into the building, combined with the fourth dimension, time. The building changes as one nears it. Abstract from a distance, its carefully conceived detailing comes into focus at street level and continues inside, where its spatial sequencing and rich materials become tangible.

On the western side, the entrances are placed at the north and south corners, set into mini plazas that are carved into the building’s footprint. When you enter the building, you walk parallel to the street, a device that Maki uses in nearly all his designs. “You don’t turn your back on the street,” Kamemoto said. “What happens is people on the sidewalk are walking parallel with you, so you have eye contact. There’s a stronger connection between the people within and outside the building, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside.”