The Twin Pillars of Wisdom and Dreams
May. 18th, 2005 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalak215 feet wide at the base and tapering to 110 feet wide at the top of the towers some 1499 feet above the ground; 117 stories in all. Strong curtain columns two feet square would be set some four feet apart and spanned by semi-silvered glass. The whole building would shine in the light of day.
At two equidistant levels on each tower a balcony, reduced to the appearance of a ledge by the sheer size of these buildings, some twenty feet wide is supported by metal beams curved out from the façade. They are at the level of the sky lobbies where there are also places to eat and shop at these subway stops in the sky. Residents and workers can use these places to get some fresh air without having to leave the building completely. Between the two towers on each of these balcony levels bridges like flying buttresses of steel connect the two together to give a way to access the other tower without descending to street level. Not only do they add to it visually but also the safety of the towers is improved with additional routes of exit. The towers are also linked to other surrounding buildings at lower levels by similar pedestrian viaducts.
From the rooftop of the Tower of Dreams springs a spire mirroring the graceful taper of tower bellow it and flared outward at its base. It is some 277 feet tall and 20 feet wide at its top where it joins with a 50-foot wide platform 1776 feet above the ground. Here tourists may come, paying a fee of course, to look out upon the City and Harbor of New York. Above this enclosed observation deck an antenna mast rises another 225 feet into the sky topped with a golden sphere. At night a fiery orange red beam stretching into infinity showing our dreams go on ever onward and upward emerges from its tip. The Tower of Wisdom is flat at its top and planted with hardy plants not needing much care and niches where practical in the hopes that birds like falcons or eagles might use this urban mountain.
Half the floor space of these building is rented out as offices in the standard mode. But to ensure this is a vital living community and not a place that falls silent when the working day is done the other half is filled with museums, restaurants, shops, and residences in blocks up and down the two towers. The museums, not only the one dedicated to remembering one September day in 2001, occupy their spaces rent free paying only for their utilities as long as they meet non-profit requirements set out by the managing authority for their space and attract the interest of visitors. And at the base of these great structures tree lined paths and two open squares recalling two earlier majestic edifices without mourning them.
These buildings are built partially with funds from insurance corporations but also through the donations of people wishing to see these structures rebuilt as such soaring heights are not pushed up by purely economic forces. I'd chip in $100 for a design like this or similarly echoing the towers beautifully and not just putting up commercial space that will stand empty for years and just contribute to nobody living in that part of Manhattan.
This has been a daydream of what I would stump to be built at "Ground Zero" inspired by the intriguing plan by Kenneth Gardner and Herbert Belton that Donald Trump is stumping for currently. (I can't believe that I agree with Trump about the problems with the Freedom Tower design. Plus that name, yick.)
If you look at any of the close ups of the plan it has a lot more horizontal elements than the World Trade Center and I think that makes it look less interesting and not as soaring. Also with the wider pillars set further apart the building will no longer have the shimmering wall of aluminum effect that was so pretty before. My daydream buildings remedy this by using semi-silvered glass between the pillars and hiding the horizontal elements behind nearly identical glass as used in the windows. This will also help the energy efficiency of the building.
Also I don't like how flat the façade seems in the displays, but that could just be an artifact of the model. I really like the V shape of the aluminum-alloy cladding on the curtain wall pillars from the WTC. And I also don't like how WTC-II fills the plaza with low buildings.
Not that I really get a say in any of this other than spouting off in my journal.
At two equidistant levels on each tower a balcony, reduced to the appearance of a ledge by the sheer size of these buildings, some twenty feet wide is supported by metal beams curved out from the façade. They are at the level of the sky lobbies where there are also places to eat and shop at these subway stops in the sky. Residents and workers can use these places to get some fresh air without having to leave the building completely. Between the two towers on each of these balcony levels bridges like flying buttresses of steel connect the two together to give a way to access the other tower without descending to street level. Not only do they add to it visually but also the safety of the towers is improved with additional routes of exit. The towers are also linked to other surrounding buildings at lower levels by similar pedestrian viaducts.
From the rooftop of the Tower of Dreams springs a spire mirroring the graceful taper of tower bellow it and flared outward at its base. It is some 277 feet tall and 20 feet wide at its top where it joins with a 50-foot wide platform 1776 feet above the ground. Here tourists may come, paying a fee of course, to look out upon the City and Harbor of New York. Above this enclosed observation deck an antenna mast rises another 225 feet into the sky topped with a golden sphere. At night a fiery orange red beam stretching into infinity showing our dreams go on ever onward and upward emerges from its tip. The Tower of Wisdom is flat at its top and planted with hardy plants not needing much care and niches where practical in the hopes that birds like falcons or eagles might use this urban mountain.
Half the floor space of these building is rented out as offices in the standard mode. But to ensure this is a vital living community and not a place that falls silent when the working day is done the other half is filled with museums, restaurants, shops, and residences in blocks up and down the two towers. The museums, not only the one dedicated to remembering one September day in 2001, occupy their spaces rent free paying only for their utilities as long as they meet non-profit requirements set out by the managing authority for their space and attract the interest of visitors. And at the base of these great structures tree lined paths and two open squares recalling two earlier majestic edifices without mourning them.
These buildings are built partially with funds from insurance corporations but also through the donations of people wishing to see these structures rebuilt as such soaring heights are not pushed up by purely economic forces. I'd chip in $100 for a design like this or similarly echoing the towers beautifully and not just putting up commercial space that will stand empty for years and just contribute to nobody living in that part of Manhattan.
This has been a daydream of what I would stump to be built at "Ground Zero" inspired by the intriguing plan by Kenneth Gardner and Herbert Belton that Donald Trump is stumping for currently. (I can't believe that I agree with Trump about the problems with the Freedom Tower design. Plus that name, yick.)
If you look at any of the close ups of the plan it has a lot more horizontal elements than the World Trade Center and I think that makes it look less interesting and not as soaring. Also with the wider pillars set further apart the building will no longer have the shimmering wall of aluminum effect that was so pretty before. My daydream buildings remedy this by using semi-silvered glass between the pillars and hiding the horizontal elements behind nearly identical glass as used in the windows. This will also help the energy efficiency of the building.
Also I don't like how flat the façade seems in the displays, but that could just be an artifact of the model. I really like the V shape of the aluminum-alloy cladding on the curtain wall pillars from the WTC. And I also don't like how WTC-II fills the plaza with low buildings.
Not that I really get a say in any of this other than spouting off in my journal.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-18 09:38 pm (UTC)"The Libeskind site plan (The New York Times) - a plan without meaning. The four new super skyscrapers are dark blue. With this plan, the terrorists win (http://www.triroc.com/wtc/siteplans/index.htm)."
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-18 09:56 pm (UTC)