Archinect - News

Now you can experience Calatrava's St. Nicholas Church at the 9/11 site also digitally

2024-09-10T19:53:00-04:00

A new digital recreation of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine has been released in time for the 23rd anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan.

The creative team behind the new app's development, G&A, says they wanted to find a way for those located outside of New York City to share in its inspiring and symbolic rebirth in a lasting way that harkens to the spiritual mission undertaken by church leaders since its establishment during the first World War.

In-app visual. Image courtesy G&A

Using drone-enabled 3D photogrammetry, Santiago Calatrava-designed architecture and recovered original iconography can be experienced in detail along with supplementary text, audio, and short films relating the story of its history and documenting the $95 million worth of contributions that led to its eventual regeneration in 2022.

In-app visual. Image courtesy G&A

"We’re proud of th...

Recalling Philippe Petit’s World Trade Center high-wire act after 50 years

2024-08-09T19:03:00-04:00

The walk can never be repeated, but it also can never be undone. You cannot fly a jetliner into a memory. In hindsight, the so-called art crime of the century has become a tribute to the lives of the 2,753 who were killed in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and whose stories, too, will always live on. When I see a photo of Mr. Petit in the air, it suggests to me that the lost were able to bridge that distance, too.

Philippe Petit’s early morning stunt on August 7, 1974, helped sway public opinion in favor of the recently opened NYC World Trade Center towers, which struggled financially until the Port Authority changed course and allowed financial services companies to begin leasing space by the end of the decade. The 75-year-old is currently on a media tour promoting his two-day performance at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, where his daughter’s ashes are interned.

At the time of their 1973 opening, architect Minoru Yamasaki had said his towers were "a representation of man's belief in humanity." Fans have said this notion also courses through Petit’s life and art in the most serene and apparent, life-affirming ways.

New York Gov. Hochul announces affordable housing plans for KPF's 5 World Trade Center

2023-08-02T14:07:00-04:00

Progress on the 5 World Trade Center (5WTC) project by KPF moves forward after a press conference announcement on July 27 from New York Governor Kathy Hochul. In an effort to build more affordable housing in Lower Manhattan, the news reported by The Real Deal states that the mixed-use skyscraper will also include 1,200 rentals "with one-third designated for low-to-moderate-income within the World Trade Center redevelopment."

In January 2022, Archinect reported on the project and its online petition for creating affordable housing options for 5 World Trade Center. Led by the New York Review of Architecture and Citygroup, the petition called for a "75% increase in the number of affordable units in the 900-foot 5 World Trade Center. The document, titled 100% Affordable, pressed developers to do away with the current plan, which designates 300 of the development’s 1,200 rental units for tenants earning less than 50 percent of the median income, in favor of a more progressive scheme tha...

Calatrava’s completed St Nicholas Church at 9/11 site features a translucent stone exterior that appears to ‘glow by the light of 10,000 candles’ at night

2022-12-07T10:39:00-05:00

Work has been completed on the Santiago Calatrava-designed St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine. The church is the second Calatrava-designed project to be completed at the World Trade Center Memorial site in New York City, following his World Trade Center Transportation Hub, which opened in 2016.

Image © Alan Karchmer for Santiago Calatrava

Calatrava’s church is steeped in symbolism, largely influenced by Byzantine architecture. The church’s dome features 40 windows and 40 ‘ribs’ to echo the 40 ribs of Saint Nicholas, visible from both the interior and exterior. Outside, the structure is constructed of Pentelic marble to reference the same marble used on the Parthenon in Athens, while the accentuated corner towers of the scheme are clad in bands of white and gray marble reminiscent of the Church of the Holy Savior in Chora, Turkey.

Image © Alan Karchmer for Santiago Calatrava

At night, the church’s dome is illuminated from within, creating what the design team calls ...

Calatrava-designed new St. Nicholas National Shrine lights up in ceremony honoring the lives lost during 9/11

2021-09-15T12:56:00-04:00

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church hasn't been open for two decades. The church was located steps way from the World Trade Center, and it was completely destroyed on September 11, 2001. But this week, just ahead of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church will be reborn.

The 80-year-old church has been rebuilt near the One World Trade Center, and last Friday, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, it was lit up from within for the first time. The original church, located at 155 Cedar Street in Manhattan’s Financial District, was founded in 1916 by Greek immigrants who purchased a tavern as a community house. As noted on the church’s website, this location was one of the first stops for Greek immigrants in America after departing Ellis Island.

During the events of 9/11, the church was destroyed in the collapse of the south tower. In the years that followed, Ground Zero was transformed with the construction of One World Trade Center and a new transportation hub, and an agreement to rebuild St. Nicholas was made between the church and the Port Authority. The resulting decision was to construct the new church at 130 Liberty Street, a location nearby the original site and close to the 9/11 memorial.

Previously on Archinect: Santiago Calatrava's G...

The global reach of 9/11 through the memorials across the world

2021-09-11T20:16:00-04:00

Since the events of 9/11 twenty years ago, a vast array of memorials, from modest sculptures to landscaped gardens, have been erected across the world, honoring the victims, survivors, and first responders. While many of the overseas works are lesser known, they have an equally local and worldwide meaning, paying homage to specific individuals and groups while commemorating the tragedy, as a whole. Many are composed of repurposed steel from the towers, breathing new life and meaning into the former structures. In honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, here is a collection of impactful tributes, from New Zealand to Germany.

Tribute to Firefighters (2002). Image: Courtesy Graham Bennet

Tribute to Firefighters (2002), Christchurch, New Zealand - Graham Bennett

Sculptor Graham Bennett was invited by the Christchurch City Council to create a sculpture commemorating the firefighters whose lives were lost during 9/11. The piece is composed of steel from the World Trade Center that had fal...

A look back at Archinect on September 11th, 2001

2021-09-11T20:02:00-04:00

I was staying at a friend’s apartment in the heart of Hollywood on the evening of September 10th, 2001. I had to wake up unnaturally early the next morning to move my car to avoid getting a parking ticket. I vividly recall the eery feeling squeezed into the tiny old elevator as I descended the building with more neighbors than I would have expected to be awake at that hour. Nobody said anything. I could tell something was off. The moment I got into my car the radio quickly caught me up. In fact, it was right at the moment the second plane hit the towers… a little after the 6 am deadline to move my car out of the streetcleaner’s way. I don’t remember re-parking my car or returning to the apartment, but I clearly remember spending the next many hours jumping between the television, my phone, and my computer, taking in the horror and working it out with friends, family, and colleagues in real-time.

Screenshot of Archinect from September 2001

Archinect was only 4 years old at that time....

Twenty years in the making, EarthCam pays tribute to the World Trade Center site with an epic time-lapse video

2021-09-10T15:32:00-04:00

Twenty years after 9/11, the popular geographic livestream site EarthCam has revealed its commemoration of the tragedy using footage taken from two decades of loss and rebuilding.

EarthCam founder Brian Cury installed the camera in the days following the attacks to document the monumental recovery effort taking place in lower Tribeca. The twenty-five-year-old company, which is headquartered just across the Hudson in Upper Saddle River, NJ, has been continuously recording the site since then, making it the longest-running time-lapse project in EarthCam history.

Now, with unseen footage taken by cameras that captured every day of the past twenty years in thirteen million individual photographs, the interregnum has been reduced to a six-minute encapsulation of the transformation of the sixteen-acre site from an active crime scene to an eerie void and finally to its current form as a tourist destination and memory site visited by over 6.5 million people per year.

“This creative time-lap...

New PBS documentary details the NYC Department of Design and Construction's World Trade Center cleanup

2021-09-10T14:11:00-04:00

A new documentary airing on PBS recounts the efforts of the NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC) as it spearheaded the gargantuan task of cleaning Ground Zero following the attacks on the World Trade Center 20 years ago.

“NYC DDC 9/11” by Ironbound Films features a collection of historic footage interspersed with interviews of DDC staff, offering a candid recollection of the events of 9/11. The documentary goes into detail about DDC’s steadfast process of removing 1.8 million tons of debris from the site.

“As the City faced one of its greatest crises in its history, DDC managed cleanup of the wreckage of lower Manhattan, even as the search for fellow New Yorkers continued,” said DDC Commissioner Jamie Torres-Springer. “This effort was predicted to take years, but DDC staff was able to accomplish it in eight months of long, hard, and emotionally difficult work. The story of this work is now told vividly by current and former DDC staff members who shared their unique insi...

Mark Cuban just donated a trove of World Trade Center drawings to the Cooper Hewitt

2021-09-10T11:56:00-04:00

In 1962, Diniz was hired by architect Minoru Yamasaki as part of the team designing the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. His drawings in the WTC portfolio show viewers the experience of monolithic structures in the context of Lower Manhattan and inside the buildings themselves. The drawings were intended to illustrate Manhattan as a center of international business.

Carlos Diniz' drawings occupy a revered place in architectural history, and his World Trade Center drawings have been by and large kept out of public collections until now. The illustrator was first hired by Minoru Yamasaki in 1962 to give the public a sense of place and scale caused by the architecture that would later become the domineering experience for users of the buildings after they were completed in 1973.

"It strikes an emotional chord with every American," Cuban told Axios. "I wanted the actual drawings to be where any American can see them, and the Smithsonian was the right home."

The Dallas Morning News has more on the billionaire's gift here.

The war in Afghanistan left behind a host of abandoned buildings and other infrastructure

2021-09-08T15:25:00-04:00

The Afghan countryside is littered with abandoned and decaying power plants, prisons, schools, factories, office buildings and military bases, according to a watchdog agency, the legacy of the U.S.’s 20-year effort to fund the establishment of a modern Afghan state that could provide security and basic services for its citizens

A reported $145 billion went to infrastructure projects and construction equipment alone. In March, an American taxpayer watchdog group called SIGAR released a report which estimated $6.6 billion worth of buildings and vehicles went misused or were abandoned since the 20-year war began. Architecture in the country is likely to fall into dire straights as the Taliban have gained total control of every province.

The embassy complex alone cost the U.S. over $8 billion. President Bush called the main building a “big, solid, permanent structure, which should represent the commitment of the United States of America to your liberty” at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in March of 2006.

The Wall Street Journal has more on what’s been left to rot here.

Spike Lee re-edits HBO series following backlash over inclusion of 9/11 conspiracy theorists

2021-08-26T15:17:00-04:00

Facing mounting criticism for spotlighting conspiracy theorists in his new HBO documentary series about the Sept. 11 attacks on New York, the filmmaker Spike Lee said Wednesday that he was re-editing the final episode.

The final episode of Lee’s four-part docuseries “NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021½,” which explores New York’s greatest challenges in the 21st century, including the attacks on 9/11 and the COVID-19 pandemic, featured members of the conspiracy organization Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, who believe the World Trade Center was destroyed by a controlled demolition. The filmmaker faced criticism and backlash over the group's inclusion in the show after it was made available for preview.

Critics stated that the episode appeared to balance the perspectives and even at times side with the perspectives of the conspiracy theorists.

Lee’s response in a statement to the media reads: “I’m Back In The Editing Room And Looking At The Eighth And Final Chapter Of NYC EPICENTERS 9/11➔2021½. I Respectfully Ask You To Hold Your Judgment Until You See The FINAL CUT.”

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Lee defends the inclusion of the conspiracy group stating, “I mean, I got questions. And...

Final World Trade Center Site Will be Sold Soon

2019-06-07T16:22:00-04:00

Two state agencies that had been embroiled in a yearslong impasse over how to develop the last site at the World Trade Center appear to have resolved their differences and are planning to bring the parcel to market. The Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. have reached a deal to release a request for proposals in the coming months for 5 World Trade Center

Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) head Holly Leicht explained in a meeting that "after quite a lengthy period of time of negotiation, we executed a memorandum of understanding with the Port, the LMDC and the city to move forward on an RFP for Site 5, which will be our last major site to develop," adding, "The reason for the appraisal now is because there's a base value the Port wants to get for the land."

Though the site is currently zoned exclusively for commercial development, LMDC will accept proposals for either commercial or residential uses for the site. The group is expected to issue a Request for Proposals for the site over coming weeks.

New memorial at World Trade Center site to honor those affected by 9/11-related illnesses

2019-02-04T16:09:00-05:00

The New York Post reports that the 9/11 Memorial and Museum plans to open a section dedicated to those who’ve died or have grappled with 9/11-related illnesses—first responders, survivors, and New Yorkers who lived close to the World Trade Center site during the recovery efforts among them.

According to the New York Post, the designers of the landmark Reflecting Absence 9/11 Memorial, architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker, were also in charge of planning this new memorial which is expected to be finished by May 30.

Skylight of Santiago Calatrava's WTC Oculus to reopen for 9/11 anniversary

2018-09-10T17:30:00-04:00

The opening allows for the “Way of Light” to pass through the main hub of the transit hall at 10:28 a.m.—the moment that the North Tower of the WTC collapsed on September 11, 2001. The path along which the light travels inside the hall symbolizes “the light that continues to shine through after the darkness of the tragedy,” says a spokesperson for the Oculus.

"Architecture is a field of repression": Daniel Libeskind on childhood memories, trauma, and architecture

2015-11-19T17:05:00-05:00

"You repress almost everything to produce a building," states Daniel Libeskind during a long and wide-ranging conversation with the architectural historian Gillian Darley in the context of the exhibition Childhood ReCollections: Memory in Design at the Roca London Gallery.

"Everything is repressed because it has to fit into the context, it has to be stylized, it has to appeal to clients, it has to be normal," he contends. "But I always thought, try to show what has been repressed in architecture. It’s very difficult because people don’t like it."

Their conversation touches on a number of Libeskind's central concerns and makes frequent reference to both his biography and his oeuvre. Here are some of the highlights (check out the full video below):

On his childhood:

"I was lucky to have that experience of... the mythology of New York, which is arriving by boat as an immigrant. You know, woken up, 4 o’clock in the morning by my mother with my sister, go up, wake up, 'you’re going to see Ne...

There is nothing so stable as change: Nick Taylor, director of BIG's 2WTC video, and McShane Murnane of Project M Plus on Archinect Sessions #34

2015-06-18T18:22:00-04:00

Easily the biggest news of last week, and probably of this year, was the unveiling of BIG's design for 2WTC. For a project of such status, on such a highly charged site, representation must be handled with expert care – so to dig a bit deeper into the splashy video introducing 2WTC, we spoke with Nick Taylor, co-founder of Squint/Opera and director of the BIG video. We cover Squint/Opera's historied relationship with architects and how creative vision is managed across many powerful stakeholders.

Paul and Amelia also sat down with McShane Murnane, architecture director and co-founder of Project M Plus, a husband-wife creative studio out of Los Angeles' Silver Lake. Often viewed as a case-study for gentrification in LA, Silver Lake has established a highly specific aesthetic within the Californian sensibility, that has its pros and cons – we speak with Murnane about how he's dealt with issues of developmental displacement head-on.

And in the news, we discuss how Tadao Ando is faring am...

The growth of a skyscraper: One WTC in photos

2014-09-11T15:49:00-04:00

On this 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a shiny new skyscraper towers over what was once a smoldering pile. It’s touted as “an ever-present symbol of renewal and hope,” but the process to build One WTC, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, has been arduous and much-delayed. The project, which has had its share of critics, is finally set to open in early 2015.

World Trade Center Bosses Turn Site into Grim Fortress

2013-07-25T13:55:00-04:00

Antiterrorist paraphernalia litter parts of nine square blocks, or at least a dozen acres -- all to protect the New York Stock Exchange from attacks. Where Broadway opens to Wall Street, jaw-like truck barriers and a plastic-tent guard booth block the street. A fence squeezes pedestrians into one narrowed sidewalk. Concrete Jersey barriers posing as planters are particularly hideous, part of a new antiterrorist aesthetic that afflicts courthouses and City Hall.

The NYT on the 9/11 Museum, to open Spring 2014

2013-07-01T17:29:00-04:00

Steven M. Davis, a partner in Davis Brody Bond, which designed the museum, said he and his colleagues had been guided by the principles of memory, authenticity, scale and emotion. The museum will not open to the public until next spring, but officials have begun taking reporters through the unfinished galleries, confident that what was a construction zone a year ago, and a disaster area after Hurricane Sandy, now looks more like a museum.

Security trumps urban planning at WTC site

2013-05-17T13:56:00-04:00

With the blank slate offered by a catastrophic attack, planners, soon joined by the mayor himself, saw a chance to re-establish a great crossroads: Fulton and Greenwich Streets, tying the second World Trade Center into New York — north, south, east and west. Now, however, they see that vision slipping away, as security concerns trump urban planning.

Vandalism at the Louvre Lens references "Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth" group

2013-02-08T20:29:00-05:00

The woman wrote “AE911” on the bottom right-hand corner of the painting before she was challenged by a security guard and a visitor. A Louvre conservation expert cleaned off the writing yesterday and the unharmed painting will be on show to the public once again this morning. “AE911Truth” is the name of a website for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a group which claims that the official version of the terrorist attacks on Manhattan and Washington on 11 September 2001 is a cover-up.

Image of Democracy: Why I Want to Build Nine Freedom Towers in Tiananmen Square

2012-03-22T12:39:00-04:00

Eleven years ago I made a modest proposal to create a series of three massively flat and empty superblocks (two in New York and one in Washington DC). I last showed these proposals as three large architectural site models, just six months before September 11th attacks. Because my proposals seemed to foreshadow the 16 acre gap left in Manhattan’s grid, I was urged to revisit the project.

MVRDV Responds to 9/11 References in Cloud Project

2011-12-09T18:14:00-05:00

A real media storm has started and we receive threatening emails and calls of angry people calling us Al Qaeda lovers or worse. MVRDV regrets deeply any connotations The Cloud projects evokes regarding 9/11, it was not our intention.

The Cloud was designed based on parameters such as sunlight, outside spaces, living quality for inhabitants and the city. It is one of many projects in which MVRDV experiments with a raised city level to reinvent the often solitary typology of the skyscraper. It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks nor did we see the resemblance during the design process. We sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings we have hurt, the design was not meant to provoke this.

The design inspiration of The Cloud is visualised in the image here attached. (see above)

9/11 Museum Is Delayed

2011-11-22T16:28:18-05:00

The planned 2012 opening of the Sept. 11 museum at the World Trade Center is in jeopardy amid a dispute over hundreds of millions of dollars in unexpected costs related to redeveloping the site, people familiar with the matter said.

From the School Blogs: Live Blog: Naginski, Jarzombek, Savage, and Wodiczko on Memory, Vision, and Practice

2011-09-13T19:58:00-04:00

Live-blogging tonight from Piper Auditorium, where we have a new gold lamé curtain. Krzysztof Wodiczko, Erika Naginski, Mark Jarzombek, and Kirk Savage are talking in an event marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Editor's Picks #228

2011-09-11T13:58:47-04:00

News
In the lead up to 9/11 Christopher Hawthorne wrote "The tall tower is architecture's most famous building type and also the one most clearly at odds with the profession's roots. Fundamentally, architecture is shelter, a concession that we're afraid to face the elements without protection. A skyscraper is vertical hubris." In response to which Donna Sink queried "So is CCTV a greater or lesser example of hubris than the next-temporarily-tallest tower?"

The New York Observer, observed that "Thanks to some lightning rods, 1 World Trade Center will be free from some of the silly symbolic weight given to it by Danny Libeskind." However, TheMasterBuilder disagreed "I like this design, and I'm glad they went with this instead of exactly what Libeskind had proposed. The Chamfered edges, the square profiles the large antenna all recall the original WTC buildings. ..Overall, I'd say, it's not ideal, and its not what people were hoping for, but neither was the first WTC, and I'm sure...

We saw it coming

2011-09-07T18:20:36-04:00

Marking the decade since the attacks of September 11, 2001, Lebbeus Woods offers reflections on the context for the tragedy, and the reconstruction's bitter sense of business as usual

dispersed memorial

2011-08-26T15:04:14-04:00

On September 11, 2010 fieldoffice launched an effort that will acknowledge lives lost during the tragedy of September 11, 2001 as well as reconstruct as many views of the city’s lost skyline. Thousands of glass plates, inscribed with a written dedication to a victim and an outline of the missing skyline, will populate New York City from anywhere in the city that the towers would have been visible.

Ground zero master planner, Daniel Libeskind, praises 9/11 memorial, calls it a 'visceral encounter with this piece of New York'

2011-08-15T14:40:00-04:00

My idea in the master plan was that this was a place of the spirit. This is where people perished. It was not a piece of real estate any longer. You could not put a building there.

Previously on Archinect: Water On at WTC Memorial & On the 9/11 memorial and its disappointments.