3 World Trade Center | Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners

The design of the structure of 175 Greenwich Street, as expressed by the mainframe of the east and west elevations, gives a clearly defined and legible form to the building. The external supporting structure is a load-sharing diagonal element on a 16-storey module that also emphasises the verticality of the tower. This divides into a finer grain at the corner elements. All four corners of the tower are expressed in the same way with the use of symmetrical hangers with diagonal and vertical elements. The hung corners, divided into four-storey segments, liberate the floorplate edges creating column-free corners within the office spaces of the tower. Two set-backs are created to achieve variation on the floorplate size higher up in the building. The height of the ‘shoulder’ at the southern corner has been defined in relationship to its proximity to Tower 4 at 150 Greenwich Street – and as a response to the way in which it is cut back – thereby making an architectural gesture towards the Freedom Tower diagonally opposite. This achieves a greater separation between the different towers as well as enhanced views for occupiers at higher levels. At ground level, the use of a triple height cable-net façade to the West, onto Greenwich Street, reinforces the transparency of the entrance to the lobby and the combined retail and transit hall facing the Memorial Park. In the transit hall, the corner of Greenwich and Cortlandt Streets is animated by the use of exposed glazed lifts and glass floor landings where they meet the escalators. The transit hall forms part of the access to the transport hub and connects Towers 2, 3 and 4 at the below grade levels through a retail concourse (designed by Santiago Calatrava). The design concept for the 71-storey tower addresses its central position on the WTC site. The building has an orthogonal relationship to the main space between the proposed memorial water pools. To complement this relationship, the central zone of the building has been reduced in mass as it rises towards the sky. The effect is a stepped profile which accentuates the building’s verticality relative to the Memorial site. 175 Greenwich Street is also distinguished from the designs of the surrounding buildings by its antennae, which add height and by day and night give the building a distinctive profile when viewed both in the local context and at a distance as part of the Manhattan skyline. The main components of the concept include five trading floors, 54 office floors (totalling 2.1 million sq ft) and five retail levels, as well as eight mechanical floors which serve the trading and office floors, 37 passenger lifts and two principal stairwells. The lower part of the building – the ‘podium building’ – contains the tower’s retail element and the trading floors the upper levels of the tower hold the office space. The ground floor, at street level, will have ‘live’, active façades which will enable the free-flow movement of shoppers. There will be two below-grade retail levels and three retail levels above the ground floor, and these will served by two lifts and four stairwells. The ground-floor lobby, which is on Greenwich Street, will offer visitors and tenants a ‘big picture window’ onto the WTC memorial. To maximise sustainability in terms of the building’s day-to-day functioning, similar ‘green design’ features as those included in the design of 7 World Trade Centre have been incorporatedThe design team are committed to ensuring that energy use and costs could be significantly reduced compared to typical Manhattan office buildings. It is hoped that 175 Greenwich Street – like 7 WTC – will be certified under the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) programs.

[IT]
Con i suoi 71 piani distribuiti su 352 metri di altezza, “175 Greenwich Street” - il grattacielo progettato da Richard Rogers - sarà il terzo edificio più alto dell’area. La struttura si svilupperà su una superficie complessiva di 2.8 milioni metri quadrati che includeranno due piani occupati da negozi, cinque da spazi commerciali e 54 da uffici. Il peso della struttura sarà distribuito attraverso un sistema di rinforzo a forma di diamante che articolerà la configurazione est-ovest dell’edificio. Tutti gli angoli della torre saranno liberi da colonne, in modo da assicurare a chi occupa lo spazio all’interno una vista panoramica della città a 360 gradi.