10 years later, One World Trade Centre will meet almost impossible expectations

by Richard Spragg

The trouble began almost immediately after thoughts turned from tragedy to rebuilding. Disputes over design, location, ownership and decision making dogged every step of the first stages of rebuilding Ground Zero. It showed everyone in the worst possible light; they looked like children, squabbling while a grieving nation was looking for calm voices to come together and rebuild.

Ten years after the loss of the original World Trade Center, the story is very different. What has emerged in lower Manhattan is a simply astounding achievement in every sense. Building a complex that is both respectful of the need for a major commercial hub in one of the world’s busiest financial centers, and also respectful of the site’s status as hallowed ground was an impossible task. How can you build on the site of the towers? How can you not build on the site of the towers? What memorial could possibly offer sufficient comfort to the families of the victims or to the city of New York? What building could possibly stand tall enough or large enough to demonstrate the resilience and pride of America?

“How do you create a plan that doesn’t shift New York to sadness but has a kind of civic quality, a symbolic quality that is positive?” said Daniel Liebskind, who’s master designs for the whole complex have underpinned the final result.

The answers have come with simplicity, cooperation and creative brilliance.

Today the 9/11 memorial opens to the public. Two reflective pools carrying the names of every person killed sit in the footprints of the towers. Michael Arad’s designs create a feeling of emptiness and loss, without misery or dejection. Around them Peter Walker’s landscape design delivers a natural reflective area of water, trees and grass. In the north west corner of the site, removed from the original twin towers, One World Trade Center is quietly climbing upward. Its first five stories already complete; by 2013 it will stand exactly 1776 feet and will be the tallest building in the United States.

500,000 square feet of retail space and 69 floors of commercial offices, vital to the local economy, will coexist seamlessly with a garden of reflection and remembrance. An empty space where nothing could ever have been built will remain empty, next to the tallest tower in the Western Hemisphere.

The site is a monument to more than lost life; it is a tribute to Americas resilience, its flexibility and to the power of engineering, architecture and construction.

Against all the odds, they've managed to marry the practical and emotional needs of a local community, an economy and a nation.




Richard Spragg writes on various subjects including global engineering staffing and global engineering jobs.