Lower Manhattan from New Jersey shoreline
The foreground features Brookfield Place (formerly the World Financial Center - WFC), 1985-92; the 16-storey One North End Avenue at foreground left was added in 1997; with the newer towers of the World Trade Center beyond. The image is dominated by New York's tallest, WTC 1, 1776 feet, including antenna of 400 feet.
The four blunt towers of the WFC, which range in height from 34 to 51 stories, recap and extend the development of skyscraper style. The setback facades recount the history of the skyscraper. Each tower is divided into five major sections. The platforms appear to be largely lithic, with windows punctuating a granite-framed façade, evoking the first masonry skyscrapers. The proportions of stone and glass change at the setbacks.
At the second setback the balance of stone and glass is more even, recalling the regularity of Rockefeller Center and its expansion west of Sixth Avenue. The third setback before the attic is more open and glassy, with only the thinnest grid of superimposed granite mullions, like postwar high-modernist skyscrapers. At the very top stories, the form of the pure glass cube emerges, like Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's flush glass towers, but Pelli caps these with purely ornamental copper crowns in the form of a pyramid, a stepped-back pyramid, a dome and a mastaba.
The setback heights at the third, ninth and twenty-fourth floors were determined by the New York State Urban Development Council (NYSUDC), so that the complex would relate to the predominant building heights of Lower Manhattan.
Pelli refers to the layers of the buildings as jackets. The setbacks also penetrate inward, like missing cake slices, revealing the core structure of glass and steel beneath the granite. (Eric P Nash).
Lower Manhattan from New Jersey shoreline
The foreground features Brookfield Place (formerly the World Financial Center - WFC), 1985-92; the 16-storey One North End Avenue at foreground left was added in 1997; with the newer towers of the World Trade Center beyond. The image is dominated by New York's tallest, WTC 1, 1776 feet, including antenna of 400 feet.
The four blunt towers of the WFC, which range in height from 34 to 51 stories, recap and extend the development of skyscraper style. The setback facades recount the history of the skyscraper. Each tower is divided into five major sections. The platforms appear to be largely lithic, with windows punctuating a granite-framed façade, evoking the first masonry skyscrapers. The proportions of stone and glass change at the setbacks.
At the second setback the balance of stone and glass is more even, recalling the regularity of Rockefeller Center and its expansion west of Sixth Avenue. The third setback before the attic is more open and glassy, with only the thinnest grid of superimposed granite mullions, like postwar high-modernist skyscrapers. At the very top stories, the form of the pure glass cube emerges, like Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's flush glass towers, but Pelli caps these with purely ornamental copper crowns in the form of a pyramid, a stepped-back pyramid, a dome and a mastaba.
The setback heights at the third, ninth and twenty-fourth floors were determined by the New York State Urban Development Council (NYSUDC), so that the complex would relate to the predominant building heights of Lower Manhattan.
Pelli refers to the layers of the buildings as jackets. The setbacks also penetrate inward, like missing cake slices, revealing the core structure of glass and steel beneath the granite. (Eric P Nash).