“It reflects the sky and the buildings around it, and when the light hits it a certain way you can see right through it,” says SOM’s Gottesdiener. “Sometimes it glows a bright orange or red. It’s got a very beautiful quality to it.”
Office Space Flooded With Natural Light
Of course, notwithstanding its symbolic and monumental role, One WTC is a commercial office building. On entering, workers are immediately faced with the interior’s most impressive feature: a 50ft-high atrium. Above that, there are four levels of mechanical space, before the office floors begin on the 20th storey. After 71 storeys, there are further mechanical floors topped by a three-storey public observation deck on levels 100-102.
“It has to function as a very stable, very efficient environment where people want to come and work,” says SOM’s Gottesdiener. Key to this appeal are generous 9ft 6in ceiling heighs and column-free expanses of up to 45ft from the core to the perimeter, as well as the floor-to-floor glazing. “We wanted to allow as much natural light to penetrate the building as possible. People don’t have to turn on the lights 90% of the time, because there’s so much natural light flooding in.”
Three World Trade Center, located opposite the WTC Memorial and Cultural centre, will be 357m high. The 80-storey building has unusual design with an exposed steel structure. The building includes office and trading floors above 5 levels of retail. The three-level high lobby offers tenants and visitors a picture-window view onto the WTC Memorial.
Seven World Trade Center was the first building completed in the WTC complex in 2006. Not only was it constructed quickly, but it included a host of life-safety and environmental features never before incorporated into a commercial skyscraper. The first 10 floors house an electrical substation servicing the entire lower Manhattan area.