The Freedom Tower is undeniably innovative and all that, but it looks far too much like the kind of building that wins modern design contests. There’s too much architecture and not enough building. I don’t understand the skeleton at the top. That part of the design comes off as a vain attempt to make a smaller building fill the shoes of a larger one. It strikes me as unlike New York to punt in that fashion: especially with regard to tall buildings.

More important than the design, the Twin Towers revisited design also has a powerful emotional factor in its favour. I don’t think that selling real estate, including really big real estate, is different from anything else people pay money for: the story has to be good. And, rebuilding the Twin Towers a wee bit taller and a wee bit better is a good story. It blasts Big Apple attitude in all directions, which is good given that it’s about New York.

Their website doesn’t have a lot of detail. It does they’re planning for “a multipurpose community enterprise housing businesses, offices, shops, a day care, a seniors’ center, an interpretive museum, and a restaurant.” Without denying the ambitiousness of the project described, I must say that I am a little disappointed. As noted in the earlier post, I’m interested in new uses that really take advantage of the elevator architecture functionally. Other than the possibility of having the restaurant at the top, there doesn’t seem to be much of that here.

Of course, now that I’ve thought about the climbing facility idea more I’m beginning to wonder if it’s as structurally feasible as I thought. If I wasn’t so allergic to grain dust I’d probably try and get a tour inside an elevator to find out.

The ideas that I’ve heard include turning them into museums or putting a restaurants up top. The museum one is obvious, and it has happened (at least in Inglis). I don’t know if any of the restaurant proposals have actually happened.

There’s one idea that’s been clunking around in my head for a while, but I’ve not yet seen it mentioned anywhere else. I think an elevator would make a great rock climbing facility. A lot of climbing walls are put into normal sized buildings, which means they aren’t very tall or explorable like a real rock face would be. But, an elevator would allow the creation of some truly awesome walls both inside and out.

The really interesting part is that on the inside, in addition to being all-season and all-weather, it might be possible to make the walls easily movable. Most of the climbing walls I’ve seen (an admittedly small quantity) are static except for the movable holds, but I think it would be cool if you could also move the wall portions. I think the structure of an elevator lends itself to that kind of reconfiguration because there are so many different ways to build supports.

(Note to self: Google this.)

These are a couple of ideas I wanted to jot down before I return the book.

First, the “six S’s” from Chapter 2 (p. 13):

• Site – The … setting … whose boundaries and context outlast generations of ephemeral buildings. …
• Structure – The foundation and load-bearing elements that are perilous and expensive to change, so people don’t. …
• Skin – Exterior surfaces….
• Services – … [T]he working guts of a building….
• Space Plan – The interior layout-where walls, ceilings, floors, and doors go. …
• Stuff – … [A]ll the things that twitch around daily to monthly. …

Second, the strategic building rules of thumb from Chapter 11 (p. 186.):

… [S]pecfic to buildings: overbuild Structure so that heavier floor loads or extra stories can be handled later; provide excess Services capacity; go for oversize (“loose fit”) rather than undersize. Seperate high- and low-volatility areas and design them differently. Work with shapes and materials from near at hand,” advises Massachusetts building John Abrams. “They’ll be easier to match or replace.”