New York: Lower Manhattan skyline from New Jersey with the World Financial Center (WFC)
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 façades 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 facade, 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's towers were wittily contextual, the mastaba atop the 40-storey tall No.1 is a visual echo of the mansrad roof of Cass Gilbert's West Street Building, across the street. The orthogonal shaft of No. 3 is torqued on its irregular base, like the influential Barclay-Vesy Building by Ralph Walker.
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's towers were wittily contextual, the mastaba atop the 40-storey tall No.1 is a visual echo of the mansrad roof of Cass Gilbert's West Street Building, across the street. The orthogonal shaft of No. 3 is torqued on its irregular base, like the influential Barclay-Vesy Building by Ralph Walker. (Eric P Nash).
New York: Lower Manhattan skyline from New Jersey with the World Financial Center (WFC)
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 façades 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 facade, 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's towers were wittily contextual, the mastaba atop the 40-storey tall No.1 is a visual echo of the mansrad roof of Cass Gilbert's West Street Building, across the street. The orthogonal shaft of No. 3 is torqued on its irregular base, like the influential Barclay-Vesy Building by Ralph Walker.
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's towers were wittily contextual, the mastaba atop the 40-storey tall No.1 is a visual echo of the mansrad roof of Cass Gilbert's West Street Building, across the street. The orthogonal shaft of No. 3 is torqued on its irregular base, like the influential Barclay-Vesy Building by Ralph Walker. (Eric P Nash).