LOWER MANHATTAN — Brian August is putting the Twin Towers back in New York's skyline.
August, a Brooklyn resident who works in business development, is creating a smartphone app called "110 Stories" that allows users to superimpose a ghost outline of the Twin Towers when they take photos of lower Manhattan.
Set to launch in early September, the app uses GPS technology and calculates the shape and size of the mammoth skyscrapers from the user's vantage point. It then traces the white outline of the towers over the user's photo of their location. Users can upload the composite images they create and share their pre-9/11 memories of the towers.
"It's not really about the tragedy of Sept. 11," said August, 50. "It's about the life of the buildings from the 1960s to 2001. It's a very uplifting project."
August has been fascinated with skyscrapers since he was a child — "The bigger the building, the more excited I would be," he said — and he has fond memories of seeing the World Trade Center come into view from the Long Island Expressway each time he drove into the city with his father.
After 9/11, August couldn't walk around the city without seeing the absence of the 110-story towers everywhere, as familiar vistas took on a strangely bare look. Nowhere was the shift more obvious than on the rooftop of his Greenpoint apartment, which looks out over the East River and lower Manhattan.
"I just really became obsessed with the void, with the hole in the skyline," August said.
One day last summer, he bent a pair of rectangles out of copper tubing as a way of showing a friend just how monumental the towers had appeared from his roof. The visual impact of seeing the skyscrapers once again dominating the horizon inspired his current project.
"It just came to me: There should be a way of explaining to someone who maybe isn't from New York how big the towers were," August said.
"I knew that if I felt this strongly about it, it would touch other people."
August took his idea to Kickstarter, a website that helps people raise money for creative projects, and he quickly surpassed his initial goal of $25,000, which will help pay for the app developers at Zero Innovates and doPanic. Now August is asking for an additional $10,000 before his Aug. 12 deadline, which will help him expand the app to Androids and a website.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the project had attracted over $26,700 in donations from 426 people.
The app will be free and will be available in early September, with the official launch Sept. 10.
