Freedom tower - Finally underway

[Matt in the Hat]

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=64371

Concrete is set to be poured for the foundation of the Freedom Tower this weekend.

The Port Authority says cement work will take place as early as Friday in some parts of the site. Crews will also be working on the base of the new PATH terminal and transportation hub.

"The city's led efforts in terms of recovery of at the site we consider to be paramount, so any adjustments we've had to make to construction we have made them, and we will continue to make them and we will always continue to make them," said Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia. "To date they have not had a material impact on the construction schedule."

I kinda wish that the Libeskind concept could have been represented a bit better rather than this boring stick in the ground. I understand why the project had to change but David Childs and SOM are good enough architects to do better than this.

That said, if Libeskind's studio didn't have such contempt for all things practical like building codes and the such, maybe we would have something interesting at the bottom of Manhattan Island.

[needs]

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=64371



I kinda wish that the Libeskind concept could have been represented a bit better rather than this boring stick in the ground. I understand why the project had to change but David Childs and SOM are good enough architects to do better than this.

That said, if Libeskind's studio didn't have such contempt for all things practical like building codes and the such, maybe we would have something interesting at the bottom of Manhattan Island.

No accident that this happened, what, three months after Bloomberg got fed up with Pataki and the architects and took a bigger role.

Are they still doing the 20 story (or whatever) concrete-block base? If so, that's going to seem really weird in a space with a lot of ped traffic.

[Matt in the Hat]

No accident that this happened, what, three months after Bloomberg got fed up with Pataki and the architects and took a bigger role.

Are they still doing the 20 story (or whatever) concrete-block base? If so, that's going to seem really weird in a space with a lot of ped traffic.
To defend the architects, they were forced to complete 5 seperate design development an 3 seperate construction document sets based on the whims of the various interstate, state and local government buearocracies.

However the biggest roadblock was between the developer and the city/state.

As for the design, I haven't seen live documents in about a year (I did a good amount of work with SOM in 2005), but at that point it was a modified concrete base. It was a covered CMU with a glass curtain wall on the first couple of floors, then blank for a bit. Hopefully that garbage has changed.

[needs]

From what I've heard (and it's 3rd and 4th hand so grains of salt), Pataki was the biggest problem, as he'd come in every 3-4 months and issue some edict that the architects would then have to follow. In the long NYT story on 9.11, he certainly didn't come out looking very good.

[Iceblink]

Are they still doing the 20 story (or whatever) concrete-block base? If so, that's going to seem really weird in a space with a lot of ped traffic.

I'm not really familiar with the project... but if the concrete block base has the names of the victims inscribed, then the bottom would look like a monument.

BTW... I really hate the name of the building... Freedom Tower. Was there a vote or something, or did the government of the US or NYC just decide to name it that?

[Matt in the Hat]

I'm not really familiar with the project... but if the concrete block base has the names of the victims inscribed, then the bottom would look like a monument.

BTW... I really hate the name of the building... Freedom Tower. Was there a vote or something, or did the government of the US or NYC just decide to name it that?
IIRC, it was the name of the tower in the Leibskind master plan. That plan won a public charette in competition with 4 other designs so in a way it was voted on.

The memorial is a whole different animal on the same master plan encompassing both original footprints and the space in between. As of now it's a sunken water/granite thing with all of the manes on it. The concrete shell was purely for security measures and insisted on by the FDNY