Talk:One World Trade Center

Miami Freedom Tower

I don't really love that the article I started some time ago on the famous Freedom Tower in Miami has so the Manhattan building which does not even exist yet and may end up with another name altogether according to published sources.

Comments please?

Caltrop 18:39, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)

Clearly above it says a link to Freedom Tower (miami) so users can easily access it. Firstly the name is not going to change. Secondly the reason I made the Freedom Tower was because various articles linked directly to it and nothing linked to the Freedom Tower (miami) and I thought that the Freedom Tower was too big of an article and issue to make a joint article such as before. To me, doing anything else would create a big mess of confusion. ZackDude 22:32, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hello AGAIN ZackDude

It's your old nemesis Louis Epstein (an opponent in principle of registration for website use,I do my Wikipeding from the IP address 12.144.5.2 and can be readily contacted at le@put.com). Whether Pataki's nickname formally sticks to this not-yet-past-environmental-approval structure is a different issue...but how many times must I SCREAM at you that the two buildings in China will have WALLS AND ROOFS HIGHER THAN THE LATTICEWORK THAT EXTENDS HUNDREDS OF FEET ABOVE THE FT'S ROOF before you realize that ONLY THE SPIRE AND ANTENNA...NOT THE LATTICEWORK...have any claim whatsoever to be "world's tallest"?? You seem determined to turn this article into a promotional brochure for this project,and you don't answer me at my talk page,your talk page,or the Conflicts Between Users article.--L.E./12.144.5.2/le@put.com

Re: Hello AGAIN ZackDude

OK, firstly please cut the attitude and calm down. I am not your nemesis or enemy and just a fellow wikipedian, but before you write something make sure you have your facts correct. FYI the Freedom Tower's spire will reach 1776ft, not the antenna which will reach 2000ft. Secondly I find it no use that you keep changing the article around especially so the related topics links won't work for absolutely no reason without any discussion. Third, I was instructed from an administrator (here) that this problem could be easily solved by just putting which source claims this and that. I have already included your point of view in the article however you do not have the authority to say without research what height this and that will be and I have searched the web and found nothing on it. If you get what I am saying I am not trying to be in any way annoying or anything to you and I would not like you to escalate something minor to something major. Also I find it insane that you think I want to turn this article into some brochure. I have made various contributions and plan to make many more on articles including the top 50 tallest buildings in the US. I have taken an interest in the Freedom Tower since the plans were first released and the fact that it is soon to be #1 in US and besides I have started the main Freedom Tower article since it was a stub including making the interactive image on the bottom and was following it very closely ever after to make sure everything is professional (like your space/punctuation) and their is no wrong or slandered info. I find it hard for anybody to disagree with me and the contributions I make and have made and if you do not then I'm sure you can go to the complaints page. I also wish to point out that there is no need to compare the Freedom Tower with almost every single building ever built which I'm getting the impression you are doing. That is for the user to notice or have a link to compare the Freedom Tower's height to other building. Please if anybody wants to add to this discussion I would greatly appreciate it if they do so.

- ZackDude 06:04, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I wrote articles on the Shanghai World Financial Center and Union Square Phase 7 that link to detail pages with their specifications that show they are taller to the roofs than the tops of the FT latticework.It's your saying that the latticework is taller than any other building when the buildings taller than the latticework will be completed first that I'm objecting to most.--L.E./12.144.5.2

Thank you again for cooperating in the convo, 12.144.5.2. I think there is a basic concept that you do not understand. It is true that the two towers you mentioned will be as tall as you mentioned and there is no argument over that. However, to my knowledge, you continuously state that the Freedom Tower will not be the tallest building in the world when completed. I have asked you to find a single source that says such a thing but so far you have not posted one. A good neutral source that explains everything is an article I found here. It explains the difference between tall buildings and tall structures and the official regulations (what not to count and what to count) and declares the Freedom Tower the world's tallest (assuming another skyscraper hasn't been built higher by its completion which is unlikely at this point). There is incredibly more proof if you just simply do a news or web search for Freedom Tower on the internet.

Also 12.144.5.2, I notice that on your talk page you make note of using the Lynx Browser. I suggest if contributing to Wikipedia, it is appropriate to use a web browser which supports images. If you do, you will notice a few Freedom Tower images, the Freedom Tower article format, and an interactive picture which explains in detail how high the Freedom Tower will be and what reaches 1776ft and what is where. The interactive specification picture also includes a real-life picture comparison between the Petronas Towers, the Sears Tower, the Empire State Building, and the Freedom Tower including mentioning their heights and a measurement of their height on the image. This is a part of the article which I have a feeling you are missing and possibly your argument is just a big misunderstanding.

- ZackDude 22:11, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well,we continue to differ on which of us "just doesn't get it".There will be no one "tallest building" if everything now planned or building gets built as planned.FT would be tallest to spire and antenna and Shanghai WFC to roof and occupied floor.Those are the four CTBUH measurements.I have looked at your image in Netscape and am not unaware of the chart of comparisons carefully chosen by FT promoters.There was no secret that the Sears Tower had a higher roof and occupied floor than the Petronas Towers,just as there is no secret that the buildings under construction in China will have higher roofs and occupied floors than the Freedom Tower (and will not be the first to have higher roofs,unless you count the obs deck way above the solid structure as a roof).--L.E./12.144.5.2

Engineering-based critics however contend that taller buildings would actually be safer - can someone explain what is meant - why that would be safer etc. PMA 22:35, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

good point. I do not understand that at all. I believe 12.144.5.2 put that in so he will have to explain that. -ZackDude 03:17, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'd be happy to explain that.As Eli Attia wrote in [1] "as an architect who has devoted his life to designing tall buildings I can state without reservation that any 100-story building is in every respect safer than any 50-story building".

He goes on to explain the structural engineering imperatives that make this necessarily true...the exponentially increasing stresses that taller buildings must be built to withstand and smaller buildings can not economically be built to withstand,and the laws of physics that allow only larger objects to withstand certain forces.--L.E/12.144.5.2/le@put.com

I've gone on to add the reference to the page, and to specify that the critique comes from an architect who believes taller buildings should have been considered. Actually, this may not go far enough -- part of me thinks that more context needs to be given about Attia (he appears to have been very vocal in trying to get more architects considered for the site), but part of me thinks this needs to happen in the space of an article 9/11 memorial/Ground Zero planning rather than here.Tom 22:33, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

thumbnails

Is it really necessary to have thumbnails if the Freedom Tower picture sizes do not get bigger? - ZackDude 19:02, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Here we go again

I used to explicitly link to articles on the two buildings whose roofs and occupied floors will be higher than the latticework,and you didn't like that.So now you say they don't exist?

FT latticework=1500 feet.
Union Square Phase 7 roof=1555 feet.
Shanghai World Financial Center roof=1614 feet.I've seen renderings where people go over the hole in the top,right below the roof of the Shanghai WFC.

What part of that don't you understand?(The "broad-shouldered building" quote from the article was made to me at a presentation sponsored by the Skyscraper Museum in New York,that's where I saw the rendering). Also,at World's tallest structures see "The World's tallest habitable buildings" for the four CTBUH criteria,which definitely include "height to the top of antenna".--L.E./12.144.5.2/le@put.com

dear sysops,

this article needs to be protected. the same edit wars keep perpetuating themselves.

That is true. It can be protected however I thought 12.144 gave up on trying to change the article around. He continues to put in facts without any proof at all and has some bad habits and does not consult this talk page if a major change is done. I've been trying to tell him that and revert it back but its no use. I've kind of given up on this topic which I pretty much started and tried to montior, but because of the argument, I guess its time to move onto other Wikipedia projects that I'll get to soon. - ZackDude 17:05, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What in the world does ZackDude consider "proof" that he is wrong?I spell out explicitly numbers that don't lie that show that what he says is clearly wrong,and he says I have no proof?--L.E./12.14.5.2/le@put.com

Here is something that could set everyone OK. I have found a cool website about high buildings (including skyscrapers, bridges, antennas and even churches and stadiums) : http://skyscraperpage.com It offers diagrams of towers in construction, at this URL : http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?2063133 These diagrams shows a 700 m heigh skyscraper called Burj Dubai (website : http://www.emaar.com/new/projects_burjdubai.html) that should be finished in the same time as Freedom Tower, located in Dubai. I think that, according to the difficulty to define how high a skyscrapper is and to the numerous record beating projects all around the world, Freedom Tower should be considers as "among" the highest skyscrapers, and tell the other challengers in the same time (Burj Dubai, Union Square 7, Shanghai World Financial Center and maybe others). However, my mother tongue is not English, so I prefer no to do this by myself. --helldjinn, from the fr.wikipedia.org

Image permission statement

I don't believe that it's necessary to have this statement on the article itself. Usually permission statements go on the image page, and that's sufficient. An actual copy or mention of the permission received (email? letter?) would be very useful, however. — Asbestos | Talk 08:23, 12 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Images, symmetries, energy generation

Images produced for the developer are intended to sell the design - they are not necessarily neutral or realistic, and this needs to be acknowledged and explained.

Describing symmetries as 'clean' is less neutral than saying they are 'simple'. Saying that the tower will fit 'naturally' into the context of Manhattan is not neutral. Some precedents have been respected while others have been disregarded.

20% of energy use generated on site was a significant feature of the old design that is now lost - this is a useful fact for readers who may wish to compare this design with the previous design and I believe that it should stay in the article somewhere.

However, I can see that it would be better to keep comments about popularity / competitions etc. in the 'Controversy' section from now on.

Hello, 194.70.144.61. Your comments are fair enough except about the images. Unless you wish to "acknowledge and explain" that images produced for the developers are intended to sell the design on all the other tower pages such as the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Burj Dubai, I see no reason to single out the Freedom Tower images. In fact, when the Freedom Tower design was one that you liked, you didn't point out any flaws in the developer renderings at that time, which were equally "unrealistic". It is generally accepted that all renderings of this type are art produced for the developers, not realistic depictions like photographs. The captions you replaced were neutral, the ones you inserted were negative. Most of your other changes are more neutral, and no one tried to remove the 20% of energy use that would have been generated by the turbines (though they would have taken up 30% of the building height, this fact shouldn't be lost either). -Uris 30 June 2005 14:29 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it is generally accepted that all images are created equal, especially when it comes to images based on photographs. See this link for an description of a 'verified view' process: http://www.2d3.com/jsp/company/press-article.jsp?id=99. Obviously I can't go around putting the world to rights on this (or any issue) but that doesn't mean that images should go without comment: they are as much a contribution to the article as any written content, and therefore just as debatable. Perhaps we should strike them altogether? It's also not strictly true that the turbines would have taken up 30% of the building's height: the supporting lattice also had a symbolic function and so was larger than necessary: hence I think it's misleading to connect the figures directly. Finally, I don't remember expressing a view on the previous proposal, although I'll make no secret that I think the present state of affairs has resulted in a travesty of the competition process (if you held this competition again, who would waste time and money on it?) and a comparatively conservative design.

Hi there, 194.70.144.61. I don't have any complaint with these tamer edits you have made to the captions. I'm not sure what the "symbolic function" of the latticework was, but it would have made sense to me to use even more turbines in an effort to generate a more significant amount of energy for the building.

And I do believe, as you do, that the contest was a sham. There was never any vote either to decide the finalists, or to decide the winner. And when the winner was so arbitrarily selected, the masterwork of his design (the "vertical gardens") didn't seem to have ever been seriously considered. How this design went from those beautiful green gardens hanging in the sky to that empty wind skeleton of the compromise is beyond me. As you know, I am a fan of the redesigned tower, but I believe that removing the vertical gardens was also a sham, as well as a shame. -Uris 30 June 2005 17:42 (UTC)

(Cynicism on) It doesn't matter anyway. All these big public architecture projects are all the same. At the point when public support is being garnered, the project is always going to have all this wonderful stuff. But when they are actually built, there are cost overruns, and mysteriously the money always runs out before the promised amenities get built. The gardens had about the same chance of materializing as the Botanical Gardens prominently featured in every description, rendering, and map of Boston's Big Dig--until the actual completion date for the project started to approach. (Cynicism off) Dpbsmith (talk) 30 June 2005 18:12 (UTC)

"Point of view" indeed: what will it look like from the ground?

I've been Googling like mad, and every picture I can find of the darn thing seems to have been rendered from a distance, with the lower portion discreetly hidden by surrounding buildings.

I'm completely flabbergasted by the idea of thirty feet of windowless wall.

What is it going to be like walking past that thing? Will there be any texture, decoration? A mural?

Will it just be a blank wall? (Won't that attract graffiti?)

I'd really like to see a rendering of what the building will look like from a pedestrian, rather than a distant, aerial point of view.

The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty is windowless, and it looks fine. But the Statue of Liberty isn't planted in Manhattan...

Will all new skyscrapers in Manhattan follow suit and be windowless for security? Dpbsmith (talk) 30 June 2005 15:00 (UTC)

P. S. this picture at least shows the lower portion, but it still isn't a pedestrian's view. I can't be the only person who finds this disturbingly ugly. Dpbsmith (talk) 30 June 2005 15:05 (UTC)

P. P. S. Why were the wind turbines abandoned? Dpbsmith (talk) 30 June 2005 15:12 (UTC)

Howdy, Dpbsmith. I don't find the base disturbingly ugly, and if I were a prospective tenant in the building I would rather it be safe than pretty. The base even if concrete would be no uglier than the Washington Monument. Although the artwork does not seem to depict it, the base will be encased in "luminous materials" such as reflective stainless steel and titanium, not concrete. The whole windowless base idea was likely a design choice demanded by the NYPD rather than desired by the architects. A passing automobile won't be able to climb up to a higher floor, and so this building will be virtually impenetrable to truck bombs (a large threat to any city superstructure in the modern age).

As far as the wind turbines, I doubt this could have been a safety concern of the police. I think it likely has more to do with the latticework's unpopularity and growing criticism (particularly Donald Trump recently addressing the nation with "it looks like the skeleton of a building") than with safety precautions. I for one, feel all that latticework was a huge waste of space to generate a mere 1/5th of the building's power. And we all know that if the designers say 20%, it means more like 10-15% when it comes down to it. Also, who was to say that there would never be taller buildings close to the Freedom Tower? In 100 years, with 3000-foot buildings surrounding it, the turbines would have no longer worked anyway because of turbulence. Then you might just be left with this ugly, useless skeletal frame of a building at that time! That's my 2 cents. Cheers! -Uris 30 June 2005 16:01 (UTC)

Criticism section

I recall there being quite an outcry from some groups that one way to increase the "usable space" in the Freedom Tower designs was to include residential condos - something lower Manhattan desperately needs. Maybe someone more familiar with the history wants to address why the idea of making it multi-use with residential was discarded? SchmuckyTheCat 4 July 2005 01:41 (UTC)

Predicting the future

When completed (possibly by 2010 after the redesign unveiled on June 29, 2005), the Freedom Tower will surpass ... and will be .... Its spire will rise to a symbolic height .... Construction will begin in the first quarter of 2006, ...

How do we know that these things will happen? Our langauge is too definite that these things will happen (not "may" happen, not "might" happen, not even "will happen if x, y, or z"). Instead we need to say that construction is "scheduled to begin", the spire is "planned to rise", the height is "designed to be". Beyond the orbits of the planets there is very little that is certain about the future. The date of a large, controversial construction project starting a year away is not definite, nor is its height down to 1/3 of a meter. This is still a plan on paper, not a building. -Willmcw 01:07, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

[..] whose predecessors WAS destroyed [..]

I'm not quite sure... but shouldn't it say WERE destroyed instead of WAS ? Thank you ;D.

--GTubio 11:23, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitary Symbolism

...When completed by 2008 or 2009, by some measurements the Freedom Tower might become the tallest building in the world, with its spire rising to a symbolic height of 1776 feet (541 m) (1776 is significant as the year of the United States Declaration of Independence). Witness in the tower a bold reminder of the United States' stubborn refusal to adhere to the International system (SI) of length measurement, the meter.

One World Trade Center linking

One World Trade Center is the name of the old north tower of the WTC and is not the name of this 'freedom tower'. The link page should be dropped even though nothing exists at it, just because it's a case of mistaken identity (World Trade Center Tower 1 isn't the same as One World Trade Center!)

Opinions on the Future Plans

I believe that the designers should realise that making something bigger and better will only make terrorists more eager to attack it again, despite our high security. I myself, think that there should be several small buildings for offices in a circle, with a semi high tower of the names of the victims and a memorial garden surrounding it with the smaller office buildings around the outside. That would be nice.

*I do not wish to argue, this is just my opinion, so just read it and add your opinions, thanks. <3 ;]* Nepegg89 02:28, 27 February 2006 (UTC)nepegg89[reply]

They better make this building terrorist-proof.

Boy am I glad you didn't have control over the design then, because my opinion is exactly the opposite. If "targets for Terrorism" is your only standard, there are plenty of tall buildings to hit and if a terrorist is intent on causing damage, they will pick one and try to blow it up. So, because the conclusion is that ANY structure of significant symbolism is a target, you may as well make the most kick butt and totally sweet super tower that you can while designing it with the security aspects required to make it as safe as possible. I'd much rather have a symbol of our resilience and determination than a bunch of lame 30 story boxes that add no cultural or unique characteristics to the city in which they are built. I'm just mad they didn't make it taller...

And by the way the statement "They better make this building terrorist-proof" is ridiculous. J Shultz 20:54, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]