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WORLD TRADE CENTER

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This proposal confronts an impossible dilemma: to react without compromise while giving voice to issues of those not present in the formulation of the design. With this in mind, we have established a few select categories that address paradigmatic questions about urbanism, architecture, and the nature of this event.

The proposed urbanism revolves around a new sacred ground: the footprints of the world trade center — truncated and rearticulated with their plans inscribed into the ground as a permanent index of the towers. Having established the original site of the WTC towers as a pair of public spaces, the proposal treats the remainder of the site as an opportunity to build with a vengeance: to reconstruct the city, urbanize it, densify it and populate it to a maximum capacity.

Project Design: Nader Tehrani, Monica Ponce De Leon
Project Coordinator: Hansy Luz Better, Hamad Al-sultan
Project Team: Christine Mueller, Christopher Orsega, Timothy Clark, Albert Garcia, Achille Rossini, Tali Buchler, Kristen Giannattasio, Jeffrey Asanza

On the site of the former Marriott Hotel and WTC Plaza, we propose a new skyscraper — neither one, nor two buildings, but an ambivalent structure oscillating somewhere between. At its base, the tower emerges from the ground as two trunks growing from opposite corners of the site. As the building rises, the structures fuse into one, tapering at its top to incorporate the necessary communication antennae. Conceived neither as a classical type nor as a modern extrusion, the tower incorporates the benefits of both morphologies to evolve into a new paradigm.

We propose a structural system that permeates both the skin and inner framework. Triangulated to join at every third floor, the system is able to achieve a critical structural redundancy while leaving enough leasable space to remain sufficiently efficient. Diagonal bracing pierces floors in varied locations, but maintains a minimum of twenty-five foot separation from adjacent structural members. The system is designed to navigate the variable geometry of the proposal — inside as a space frame and outside as a surface vector structure — while maintaining a consistent kit of structural parts; the mesh expands and contracts as it envelops different floor plates, programs, and sectional conditions. The design allows the building to respond to the context at different scales — in the manner of a base, a shaft, and a top — while absorbing the typological entities into one consistent and variable tectonic system (like a mesh sleeve for a wine bottle).

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