One World Trade Center, New York | Ground Zero - Super

Skyscrapers | Documentary

Skyscraper=
Throughout=
To avert disaster=

Concrete=
Withstand=
Submerged=

To be blacked out=
Thick=_______thin=
Cladding=

When complete in 2013, One World Trade Center will be 1,776 ft tall (you may already know that the number is
a reference to Americas signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776) and will be the tallest
building in the United States. It will also be the tallest all-office building in the world (sorry Taipei 101). Right
now, the structure is a little over 80 stories high and now the tallest building in Lower Manhattan at 961 feet
above street level, surpassing 40 Wall Street.
It was important that 1WTC not appear to replace the Twin Towers we all know that it never could. Therefore
the new edifice will occupy its own footprint, completely separate from where the original buildings stood. In
fact, the former towers will be memorialized by two large glass reflecting pools that fill the actual footprints of
the North and South towers. Unlike the bustling area surrounding the new One World Trade Center, the space
around the pools will be a calm, serene, tree-filled plaza.
For obvious reasons, the engineers who designed One World Trade Center focused heavily on structural
integrity and ease of evacuation. One World Trade Center has a reinforced, window-less base, that will be able
to withstand a truck bomb. The walls will be 3 feet thick reinforced concrete walls for all stairwells, elevator
shafts, risers, and sprinkler systems and emergency staircases were made to be extremely wide so that as
many people as possible could exit the building as safely as possible. There will be a dedicated set of stairwells
exclusively for firefighters and the ventilation system will be equipped with biological and chemical filters.