December 22, 2003	Monday	Shawwal 27, 1424

NEW YORK: New York is hoping to be on top of the world again with its Freedom Tower. The structure, designed by Daniel Libeskind and David Childs is planned to stand 541 metres tall — taller than any other building on the planet.

The design for the core building at Ground Zero in Manhattan was praised across the United States when it was revealed this weekend.

“At last, skyline begins to heal,” the New York Daily News titled its front-page report whilst the New York Post described the skyscraper as a “power tower”.

Even the architecture expert of the staid New York Times nodded his head in vigorous agreement. “With some shrewd editing, the design could become one of the noblest skyscrapers ever realized in New York,” he wrote and hailed the design’s balance between “delicacy and toughness”.

According to the ambitious schedule of New York Governor George Pataki, the Freedom Tower is by 2009, at the latest, to fill the gap that was torn into New York’s skyline by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

At the same time, the design is planned to break existing records. Its symbolic height of 1776 feet — representing the year of the Unites States’ Declaration of Independence — is to exceed even Taiwan’s “Taipei 101” skyscraper by 109 feet or 33 metres. The latter tower is under construction and due to be opened next year.

Whether the Freedom Tower will officially be accepted as the highest structure of the world, is already under dispute.

Ron Klemencic, the head of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the relevant international group based in Chicago, admits the panel is divided on the matter.

Critics have called the design a “hybrid construction” as its enclosed space reaches only 350 metres high, offering 70 floors of office space rather than the 110 of the old WTC twin towers.

Above the office floors is an open latticework structure that includes wind turbines to generate part of the electricity needed for the building.

However, even with its open cable top the skyscraper only makes it to 457 metres and is then extended another 94 metres by a spire, Klemencic pointed out in The New York Times.

Taiwan’s Taipei 101, by comparison, stands at 448 metres with 101 floors of office space alone.

Libeskind, who had previously designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin, won the open competition for designs to rebuild Ground Zero.

Besides the actual tower, his masterplan included four other gradually increasing skyscrapers, positioned in a semicircle with the tower itself as a “spiral of skyscrapers”.

The buildings were also designed to contain a cultural centre and an open centre space destined for a memorial to commemorate the 2,752 people who lost their lives in the attacks on September 11 in New York.

Controversy erupted as the investors decided to charge Childs — who was more experienced in urban development than Libeskind — to translate Libeskind’s original design into a financially viable construction.

The ensuing row between the two architects, whose enforced cooperation Libeskind once branded as an “arranged marriage”, filled headlines in New York newspapers for weeks.

In the end, the two architects only communicated with each other in the presence of their lawyers.

Childs took up the original design of the spire for the Freedom Tower, which Libeskind had intended as a symbol echoing the Statue of Liberty with its raised arm and torch.

The cable work in the design’s open structure above the office space was again meant to allude to New York’s historical Brooklyn Bridge just a few streets away from Ground Zero, Childs explained when the official model was revealed Friday.

Apart from promising to build the tallest building of the world, Libeskind and Childs also claimed to have designed the safest possible skyscraper.

The construction exceeds all of New York’s stipulated engineering requirements, the Washington Post quoted the developers of Trade Centre Leaseholder Larry Silverstein.

The base of the new tower is designed to be 25 per cent larger than the twin towers of the former World Trade Center, and the structure is additionally fortified with an internal cement frame, extra fireproofing, as well as biological and chemical air filters.—dpa