New high quality animated rendering of the new World Trade Center, Wall Street Journal

WTC Memorial Pool Construction Progress

World Trade Center Construction Update

Photo of the day: 1 World Trade Center under construction in New York City

Night shot of 1 World Trade Center under construction in New York City

2 WTC, 200 Greenwich Street, New York City

Statistics

• Estimated completion 2014
• Height 1,350ft (411m)
• 79 floors
• 2,530,000 sqft (235,000 sqm)
• Architect Foster & Partners

It's easy to overlook how immense this building will be as it is the second tallest building being built at the new World Trade Center but will be the third tallest in New York City once complete. Foster & Partners have designed the building to take forward many of the features implemented in the Hearst Tower (see seperate article) and similarly aims to achieve the gold standard under the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Programme (LEED).

Built at the North East corner of memorial park, the building incorporates a slanted roof designed to address the memorial and which will cast no shadow on the memorial park on September 11th due to it's slant. The design is arranged around a central cruciform core, currently in the early stages of construction. The building is designed as four interconnecting shafts which are column free allowing for flexible office space allowing tenats to adapt floors to suit their specific needs.

Here is a reminder of how this magnificent building will look in it's new surroundings.

Tide turning for Freedom Tower, NYC

A different type of Subway helping people out in New York City is the sandwich chain Subway who have opened an outlet in a pod which sits on hydraulic legs and will ascend with the tower to feed ironworkers on site. Opening the shop, which serves up the same menu as a regular Subway is a smart move by project managers keen to save man hours and workers walking off site to get their lunch.

Freedom Tower is the first of the four towers to rise on the site of the destroyed twin towers. The tower itself is beginning to make an appearance on the skyline too at 116 metres (380 ft) and 34 storeys high. Delivery of the tower, which will eventually be 541 metres (1,776ft) to the tip of the spire and 108 floors high, is scheduled for April 2013. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is developing the tower is courting interest from potential tenants too. The Authority and media giant Conde Nast, recently reached tenantive terms on a deal which could see the publisher, which currently calls Times Square home, taking upto 1 million sqft of space in the building and become it's largest tenant. At present the only tenant to sign terms is the Chinese Real Estate firm Beijing Vantone Industrial Company which has signed a lease for about 190,000ft on the 64th and 69th floors.

So it all seems to be coming together nicely at 1 World Trade Centre. It hasn't, though, been plain sailing all the way. The project has been heavily criticised in the past for being more about

symbolism than need with real estate executives pointing out the obvious risks of building so much office space on a speculative basis and after a redesign of the tower, corporate tenants and government workers declared they had no desire to move into the tower. This was tossed off the back of some killer criticism by journalists damning the fortified base of the tower as a grotesque attempt to disguise it's underlying paranoia and also dubbing the building "the Fear Tower".

However, when the opportunity was there to buy into a stake of the tower, there was no shortage of interest. The Durst Organization beat off competition from three other developers to buy a minority stake in the project which will see the company oversee leasing of the building as an equity partner. The tide of opinion could be changing on the Freedom Tower. Durst is the hinge - at one time it was Douglas Durst, chairman of the Durst Organisation that opposed both the original WTC and the one he'll be investing in.