Freedom Tower reaches for sky

NEW YORK -- It will soar above Wall Street, ascending higher than the world's tallest building. The shimmering, glass-encased Freedom Tower will feature a long twisting spire, evoking the arm of the Statue of Liberty, and rise hundreds of feet taller than the World Trade Center towers it will replace.

After weeks of tension between the building's two architects, David Childs and Daniel Libeskind, New York officials revealed yesterday the final design of the signature tower that will be built at the former site of the World Trade Center. The building, scheduled to be completed in 2009, will include 2.6 million feet of commercial space, and rise 1,776 feet above ground. Officials hope the new tower will stand as a dramatic revival of the city's skyline, which lost some of its luster when the twin towers were taken down by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001.

"We will build it to show the world that freedom will always triumph over terror, and that we will face the 21st century with confidence," said Governor George Pataki of New York, who has the final say over what is constructed on the 16-acre site in Lower Manhattan.

If all goes as planned, the building will be the largest in the world -- surpassing Taiwan's Taipei 101 Tower, which at 1,676 feet is currently the world's tallest. The Freedom Tower is not expected to be at the exact site of the destroyed towers, but on the northwest side of the site.

So far, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, is expected to occupy 30 percent of the tower. Pataki has promised to move his New York office to the site. A new Windows on the World restaurant also will be an occupant, replacing the one destroyed in the attacks.

Officials said the estimated $1.5 billion tower will incorporate state-of-the art safety systems, including concrete protection for all sprinklers and separate stairs and elevators for firefighters. The building also will include strong fireproofing, and biological and chemical filters in the ventilation system.

Both architects claim the building will be the safest in the world. Childs said, "We wanted it to be safe, not only for the eventual occupants . . . but for the contractors and the workers who will be up there constructing the world's tallest building."

Sally Regenhard, founder of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, said her organization is upset that the building technically will be exempt from the city's strict fire codes.

"We are outraged that the new World Trade Center site, including the Freedom Tower, will be immune from New York building and fire codes, just like the former World Trade Center," said Regenhard, whose son Christian, a firefighter, died on Sept. 11. "We feel that this is an outrage, and Pataki should make sure no building is ever above the law."

But Elizabeth Kubany, spokeswoman for the building project, said the tower will not only follow the fire code but will exceed it. She said the project has one specialist who devotes his work days to studying safety matters involving the proposed building.

Rebuilding Lower Manhattan will mean more than replacing the twin towers. The city is in the process of creating a memorial for the victims of the attacks. Street grids must be reconstructed as well as subway stations. However, it has been the rebuilding of the tower that has caught the attention of New Yorkers.

Negotiations between the architects were tense during the past two weeks. Much of the fight centered around the spire of the building, which will not contain offices. The plan now follows Libeskind's original asymmetrical structure, but Childs, who is the architect of Manhattan's Time Warner building and was chosen by the building's leaseholder Larry Silverstein, succeeded in deciding what would go inside the open-air structure atop the building.

Plans call for an estimated 70 floors of office space, including a two-floor restaurant and an observation deck. The building will be topped by a 400-foot open-air structure that will be surrounded by cables and wind turbines designed to provide 20 percent of the structure's energy needs.

Kubany said there are likely to be further changes and alterations to the design. "This is the end of the schematic design of the building, which is basically the big idea of the building," said Kubany. "But we are not saying things won't change."

Richard Meier, a New York architect who was a finalist for the design of the tower, said he believes the project is moving too quickly.

"An awful lot of things are undecided," Meier said. "We have a tower moving on one tract, a memorial on the other tract, and a transportation system moving on the other tract."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.