NEW YORK | One World Trade Center | 1,776' Pinnacle / 1,373' Roof | 108 FLOORS

[Upward]

Originally Posted by AutoBrad

Then I wondered: Does a skyscraper like this one have any sort of ice mitigation system? I can imagine ice falling from a building of this height into a populated plaza would spell disaster! A problem you would think happens all over NYC, but yet I've never heard of a single account of it.

Huge pieces of ice were falling off the top of the General Motors Building the day after a big snow last month. They restricted pedestrian access from the plaza to avoid the area where most of it was falling, but I saw a chunk land pretty far from the building and in a place where it was just lucky that it didn't hit anyone.

Anyway, here's a shot from Red Hook this evening, with 1 WTC making an appearance. Sorry for the grainy shot-- I'll have to take this picture again in better light! And, then we can compare how much the tower has grown since today.

[patriotizzy]

The whole last page was a waste of my time...
On topic: Finally they're adding new rows of glass!

[Swede]

Originally Posted by Upward

Anyway, here's a shot from Red Hook this evening, with 1 WTC making an appearance. Sorry for the grainy shot-- I'll have to take this picture again in better light! And, then we can compare how much the tower has grown since today.
https://webfiles.uci.edu/cfagan/ssp/nyc11/IMG_2556.jpg

Not long til it rises clearly above downdown from that angle too

[dchan]

Originally Posted by Obey

If you guys are so obsessed with the height of the roof, why don't you make a new thread?

I'm sure you know that there happens to be another thread just for this topic in the Buildings and Architecture forum. It was created specifically to host a previous argument about 'official height designations' that had cropped up a few months ago, also on this thread.

[hunser]

^^ absolutely, and here it is: Roof height, last occupiable floor, pinnacle height? i only wish people would actually make the attempt to post in the right thread / forum section...

[hunser]

Originally Posted by sw5710

58th floor 693'4" Or 698' to the steel splices.

so this will make 1WTC the 39th tallest building in NY. next one to pass is the metropolitan life tower, with a height of 700ft.

[xnyr]

Originally Posted by Obey

What were they saying that you couldn't say better for yourself?

I was intrigued by Traynor's post, so there ARE others who might be
interested in what someone has to say.

Secondly, I cannot stand when people think their interests are the only valid ones. They then go ballistic and tell others to "shut up." It is rude and arrogant; perhaps a thread should be dedicated - fine. But remember - there are human beings behind these posts and I believe in respecting others input.

I personally, may not like having to scroll past dozens of pics of the same thing taken at various different zoom levels - but I don't start ranting at them for making me scroll through their posting.

That's what I meant.

[ieguy441]

Yay for another row of glass!! Can't wait to see what this thing looks like 6 months from now!

[STR]

Composite shear-wall+outrigger versus bundled tube

[Biff]

Shield my young eyes, them buildin's is naked.

Man STR, you are full of all kinds of new renders. Amazing.

[Don098]

I would much rather see pictures of the new row of glass than read through all of the height crap. Does anyone have them? Thanks!

[towerpower123]

Com'on guys, can we try to keep on topic with Freedom Tower/ 1 WTC progress. Isn't there about a dozen threads just on CTBUH height discussions...

[sw5710]

Originally Posted by hunser

so this will make 1WTC the 39th tallest building in NY. next one to pass is the metropolitan life tower, with a height of 700ft.

And I see between the angled steel they have put up for floors 56,57 there is what looks to be 18' vertical steel between them. They will need to put up vertical steel at those locations for floors 58,59 so they can complete the horizontal steel for floor 57.

[sw5710]

Floors 57.58 And 59,60

[CGII]

Originally Posted by STR

Composite shear-wall+outrigger versus bundled tube

Damn, it makes the bundled tube look like ancient technology.

[STR]

^They aren't, really. The bundled tube, by all accounts, is still one of the most efficient methods of building something on this scale. It just looks clumsier because the architectural design deliberately exposes the structure visibly, whereas the WTC buildings keep a lot of structure hidden in their massive concrete cores. There are no 2-4 foot thick shear walls in the core of the Sears Tower. In fact, the Sears Tower doesn't even have a core in the same sense as 1 World Trade. It's literally just holes in the floor to let the mechanicals and elevators through the floor plates. There's also very large open spans in the older building, with lots of areas of completely clear 73 foot wide spans (75 to the column centers). The largest column free span in 1WTC is ~43 feet.

I'm not saying one is better, just different. One pushes the bulk of the structure into the core, the other spreads it out across the face. Though, I imagine the fact that Sears is 50% bigger than 1WTC might be a reason why it seems to have a lot more structure. Stacking a football field's length of glass 1100 feet in the air generates a lot of wind resistance I'd imagine.

[Zensteeldude]

The Sears Tower (I don't care what they call it now) is a very elegant design.

As STR said, it doesn't have a core per say, though some purists might argue that the central tubes in the bundle are the core. It is most certainly a more efficient design than Tower One.

To help those who might be scratching there heads right about now. Think of the Sears Tower as a bundle of nine square lengths of bamboo all tied together very tightly so they become one.

Now, think of Tower One as a giant redwood tree surrounded by a giant length of bamboo. aka a tube/tree hybrid.

STR, the wind load in even a modest wind like today, 40mph gusts, would be considerable. (Roughly 8 million pounds, of course that is not altitude factored and therefore assumes a uniform load over the entire face of one side of the tower.)

[STR]

^Adding to the efficiency comment, I've read that the John Hancock Center required 29 pounds of steel and concrete for each square foot of space, and that the later Sears building required even less. I don't have numbers to other buildings to make a comparison (though I'd be really curious how this overbuilt monster stacks up), but that really does show how lightweight these large buildings are. Less than 30 pounds of material (clearly less than what you yourself can carry) was needed to hold you and the 1 foot square patch of floor under you up a quarter mile into the sky. Amazing. And that was long before AutoCAD or SolidWorks.

[Zensteeldude]

On many occasions I have witnessed my 107 pound wife carrying my 38 pound daughter so I concur with STR. (Assuming that the tower in question was built to 110 psf loading.)

[Onn]

mavmeldrum