Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Check Out the New 'Stacked' Design for 2 World Trade Center

By Irene Plagianos | June 9, 2015 12:09pm | Updated on June 9, 2015 7:19pm
 The 81 story tower, slated for 2020 completion, will be home to 21st Century Fox and News Corp.
2 World Trade Center
View Full Caption

FINANCIAL DISTRICT — A new, "stacked" design has been revealed for long-delayed 2 World Trade Center, a soaring 81-story skyscraper that will be home to 21st Century Fox and News Corp when it's completed in 2020, the developer said.

The 1,340-foot-tall building, the final tower to be constructed on the Word Trade Center site, will have, perhaps, the quirkiest look.

The tower is designed from seven “blocks” stacked atop each other, giving the building a unique duality of form. From the perspective of the 9/11 Memorial, the building will appear similar to the tall, sleek towers that surround it — but from TriBeCa, you’ll see a series of stepped garden terraces.

2 World Trade Center
View Full Caption
Silverstein Properties

“TriBeCa, the home of lofts and roof gardens, meets the glass canvas of skyscrapers,” the architect, Bjarke Ingels, says in a video tour of the reimagined building.

“From TriBeCa, it will appear like a vertical village of singular buildings, each tailored to their individual activities, stacked on top of each other, forming parks and plazas in the sky,” the Dutch architect continues. “From The World Trade Center, the individual blocks unite, completing the spiral of towers framing the memorial.”

Another architect, Lord Norman Foster, the acclaimed 80-year-old designer of buildings like London’s iconic Gherkin created a different vision of 2 WTC years ago — a tower with a slanted glass roof in the shape of four diamonds. That design was commissioned by Larry Silverstein, the developer of the World Trade Center site.

But, according to a Wired Magazine article released today, James Murdoch — the son of Fox and News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch —“didn’t care” for that building, and instead, earlier this year, went with Ingels — described as a "wunderkind by the standards of the profession.”

Murdoch was said to have favored the open work spaces preferred by companies like Google — office space Ingels had helped to design, according to Wired.

A tentative lease deal was signed by Fox and News Corp that would give the media powerhouse, which includes the Wall Street Journal, the lower half of the building, according to the developer.

More than 5,000 employees of the companies — now located near Rockefeller Center — would take up residence at the new headquarters, slated to open in 2020.

The rest of the building, which will be the city's third tallest — behind 1 WTC and residential tower 432 Park Ave — still has to be leased.