Questions abound over the Freedom Tower's Spire, Libeskind's small but symbolic victory after Silverstein turned over design to Childs (SOM). Dunlap digs in to the technical issues planners are scrambling to resolve in order to suffice the political compromise. | NYT
January 27, 2005
BLOCKS
Will the Freedom Tower's Spire Survive?
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

What price Liberty?

The offset spire planned at the top of Freedom Tower - a conscious 21st-century echo of the Statue of Liberty's upraised arm - has been described by the architect Daniel Libeskind as the most important remaining element from his otherwise largely unrealized design for the signature skyscraper of the new World Trade Center.

The spire has survived until now in renderings and words. But as construction nears and multimillion-dollar budgets are negotiated, the realities of engineering and financing may finally overtake the symbolic architectural gesture devised by Mr. Libeskind and embraced by Gov. George E. Pataki.

David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects of Freedom Tower, has never made a secret of his unhappiness with the spire, which was effectively appended to Skidmore's design. But the current questions about the spire's future do not amount - at least on the face of it - to Round 2 of the celebrated struggle between Mr. Childs and Mr. Libeskind, the master planner for the trade center site.

Rather, they reflect the technical hurdles that the spire poses for the broadcasters that are supposed to share it. They also speak to the problem of engineering a hybrid tower that emerged from political compromise. Among the questions the planners are asking themselves are these:

¶With the antennas off to one side, would the building itself create too large a shadow for the broadcast signal?

¶Would the signal be compromised because of the distance the transmission cables have to travel from the central building core to the antennas at the tower's edge?

¶How would an eccentrically located spire behave in high winds?

¶How safe would it be to build such a spire, itself several hundred feet tall, when it cannot easily be secured to all four corners of the building below?

¶How much extra structural reinforcement would be required in the main body of the tower to accommodate an outboard spire?

¶Would it be possible to move the spire closer to the building core without exactly centering it, thereby preserving some of Mr. Libeskind's symbolic intent?

¶Assuming that the spire would be nonmetallic to avoid interfering with the broadcast signal, what sort of precedent is there for construction with composite materials on that scale and at that elevation?

All these questions can be answered. And if there are engineering problems, they can presumably be solved. But it will cost money to do so. Possibly a lot of money.

No one at the negotiating table will publicly answer these questions, including Paul Bissonette, president of the Metropolitan Television Alliance. The group, which includes Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13, signed a memorandum of understanding in 2003 with the developer, Larry A. Silverstein, to install antennas atop the Freedom Tower. Broadcasters have used the Empire State Building since the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001.

The alliance had considered building a 2,000-foot freestanding broadcast mast in Bayonne, N.J. But Edward Grebow, who was then the alliance president, was persuaded that the construction of Freedom Tower would occur "in a plausible time frame" and accommodate the broadcasters' needs.

Over the following months, the tower design changed considerably, after Mr. Silverstein, the commercial leaseholder at the site, made it clear that his architect was Mr. Childs, not Mr. Libeskind, the master planner for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

What emerged in December 2003 from a fractious relationship between the two architects was, simply put, Mr. Childs's tower with Mr. Libeskind's spire on top.

Paul Goldberger said in "Up From Zero" (Random House, 2004) that Mr. Childs, unhappy about the spire, referred to it as the toothpick or the bayonet. Others likened it to "a prosthetic device welded at the last minute to Childs's tower," Suzanne Stephens wrote in "Imagining Ground Zero" (Architectural Record-Rizzoli, 2004).

And Philip Nobel, in "Sixteen Acres" (Metropolitan Books, 2004), said that even as Mr. Libeskind pointed to the spire as an example of his influence, "its future was in doubt."

However, it is equally clear from Mr. Libeskind's memoir, "Breaking Ground" (Riverhead Books, 2004), just how much value he places in that asymmetrical spire.

"One victory in the long battle over the master plan meant more to me than any other: our success in preserving aspects in my design that evoke the Statue of Liberty, and the symbolism the statue embodies," he wrote.

"It was a hard-won battle. There were those who never felt the visceral connection to the idea that I did, others who found the connection corny. It set their sophisticated teeth on edge. But to me the Statue of Liberty is not a trinket on a keychain or a piece of rhetoric; it is the personification of liberty, the living flame.

"I have always had faith that most New Yorkers feel as I do, and embrace, as I do, Lady Liberty's essential message, that of the Declaration of Independence."

So if the offset spire comes with an extra cost, should New Yorkers pick up the tab? Or should the broadcasters pay, recognizing that they have saved money by not having to build their own skyscraping mast in New Jersey? Or should it fall to Mr. Silverstein, since this is his building and the broadcasters are his tenants?

The answer to these questions will determine whether the iconography of Liberty will take three-dimensional form at Freedom Tower.