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World Trade Center Tower
TOWER 4.5
Every architect in New York felt a heightened sense of allegiance to the city and the skyline in the wake of 9/11. Those of us building any new construction at the World Trade Center site shouldered an additional responsibility to history itself.
Our brief was to build a 30-story hotel tower in Lower Manhattan that stands just steps from the Memorial Pools. Although it was not a part of Libeskind’s master plan for Ground Zero, the Courtyard designed by DF&A neighbors the four massive towers that underpin the complex, including the tallest building in the Western hemisphere, the 1,776-foot Tower 1. At less than a quarter of that height, our hotel provided an inviting public space for visitors and residents alike, but at an approachable, human scale.
CANTILEVER TIMES TWO
To combat the compressed nature of the site, we created a double cantilever to overhang the entire tower over the podium 12½ feet over the adjacent building.
Façade
The majority of the floors face the World Trade Center site with a faceted glass exterior that appears to float above street level. But the podium is distinct: clad in an elegant steel mesh, it beckons as a glowing veil that transforms from day to night, and provides the lower floors with shade and privacy. The gift of protected proximity continues up above: a sky bar at the top of the building gives visitors a place where they can escape from and contemplate the city overlooking Memorial Park. All of it which creates what the New York Daily News describes as “a standout even among the starchitecture of Ground Zero.”
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ZONING
A solution to zoning requirements that became an elegant and distinctive feature, the steel mesh screen wall that clads the podium acts as both wall and window, allowing us to reclaim valuable square footage while shading the lower floors.
The challenge with this Manhattan project was as simple as it was daunting: build a modular hotel in one of the most tightly packed cities in the world—and make sure it doesn’t look “modular.”
For the only high-rise modular tower in a high seismic zone in America, our first priority is planning for an earthquake. But beyond that is where it gets truly interesting. We designed a tower to fit in . . . even while it stands out. The project is located between two historic buildings —the Chancery Building and the Finance Building — and down the street from an architectural gem — Willis Polk’s Hobart Building. To keep from overshadowing our neighbors, we first broke our tower into four parts to decrease its visual dominance. Then we designed a façade patterned to emphasize depth, shadow, and texture, like the façades of our neighboring buildings, albeit with steel mesh instead of terra-cotta.
Our prototype hotel room for MiTek’s modular initiative reflects our passionate belief that modular technology should serve architectural design, not supersede it. Creativity and formal expression are still possible within the parameters of factory production; efficiency does not preclude beauty.
