9 June 2015

Bjark Ingels' design of Two World Trade Center for developer Larry Silverstein and tenants 21st Century Fox Inc. and News Corp has been made public via a Wired magazine article and a flashy three-minute video.

The news that BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group would be taking the reins on the 88-story tower originally designed by Norman Foster first broke in April, but at that time a deal between Silverstein and the Rupert Murdoch-owned media companies was not official. It was also unclear what the BIG-designed tower would look like, how much it would depart from Foster's diamond-topped tower. Now we know.

One week after a tentative lease deal was signed, renderings were released today at Wired, which describes the tower as "slender and serious" from the World Trade Center Memorial Plaza, "but from other perspectives, like the one looking south from the fashionable neighborhood of Tribeca ... the stepped tower will present a more madcap personality: Ingels’ 21st-century reinterpretation of one of Manhattan’s Jazz Age ziggurats."

Ingels explains as much in the video, showing us how the tower will combine the massing of historic Tribeca buildings with the glass towers of Lower Manhattan. From the low-scale Tribeca neighborhood, the tower appears to be a series of boxes that are stepped to create elevated gardens on the east side and ticker-tape soffits on the north side. From the WTC plaza, "the individual blocks unite, completing the spirtal of towers framing the memorial," as Ingels says in the video.

Per the Wired article, "If all goes as planned, the fourth and final skyscraper at the rebuilt World Trade Center will be open for business by the 20th anniversary of September 11."