Quote:
Originally Posted by chris123678
The Change to the base wasn't something that they wanted to do. It was necessary.
The Original prismatic glass that was planned to be installed would have left the base chamfered, but the prismatic glass, when tested, failed. It was discovered that if one of these panels fell off the base in some type of explosion that the glass would break into dangerous large shards.
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But... but... we’re not using prismatic glass any more!
Let me get this straight. We had a chamfered base covered in prismatic glass. The chamfered base was turned into a box base because the chamfered corners would be dangerous if the glass shattered. Then the prismatic glass was scrapped because they couldn’t make it in the first place. And... we’re still going with the box base? Someone in charge is just not paying attention, it would seem.
To answer why the chamfered base is better (in my opinion, of course), it
reflects the rest of the tower. This is no longer true with a squared off base. It would also slightly reduce the visual weight of the base a little bit and makes it
slightly more geometrically complex and elegant, both pluses in this case where the visual focus should be the upper part of the tower (where the actual floors start). As it is, it feels completely disconnected from the tower proper, like two completely separate buildings fused on top of each other.
Meh, whatever, this is not nearly as big an issue for me as I am making it sound; again, the iconic addition of 1WTC’s skyline is supplied by its top portion, not its bottom portion.