One World Trade Center

The One World Trade Center is a Contemporary skyscraper designed between 2005 and 2007 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with David Childs as lead architect, and built between 2006 and 2014, for a reported $3.90 billion dollars, in New York, NY.

Its precise street address is 285 Fulton Street, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The One World Trade Center has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 2014. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• Presidential Award of Excellence in Engineering American Institute of Steel Construction in 2014
• CTBUH Awards for Best Tall Building in 2015
• BOMA NY in the New Construction of the Year category in 2017
• BOMA NY in the Operating Office Building of the Year, Over One Million Square Feet category in 2018
• CTBUH 10 Year Award in 2024

With an entrance on all four sides of its cubic base, with a footprint almost identical to that of the original Twin Towers. Its windowless base, standing 56 meters tall, is built to withstand terrorist attacks or car bombs.

At the time of its completion in 2014 the One World Trade Center incorporated solutions that were quite advanced at the time, these included new technologies to maximize the energy efficiency of the building and minimize pollution and environmental impact. It generates part of its own energy through elevators equipped with variable frequency and voltage drives, as well as lift motors that produce energy through regenerative braking. Additionally, more than 40 percent of the materials used in the construction of the tower were made with post-industrial recycled content, including drywall panels, roof tiles, and glass.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with David Childs as the lead architect, was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the One World Trade Center a reality:

• WSP Group in charge of Structural Engineering
• Tishman Construction as the Main Contractor
• Isreal Berger and Associates in charge of Facade Consultancy
• thyssenkrupp as the company in charge of the elevators system
• Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as the Main Developer
• Jaros Baum & Bolles in charge of MEP Engineering
• Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects and Architects Peter Walker Landscape Architecture in charge of Landscape Architecture
• Kenneth Snelson as the collaborating Artist

The One World Trade Center can be categorized as a Contemporary building.

The One World Trade Center uses a framed tube-in-tube structure , with steel columns and poured concrete over metal decking slabs.

A framed tube-in-tube structure uses a central core, known as inner tube, which usually holds stairs, lifts and installations, and a perimeter of columns around it, which form the exterior tube. The interior tube is tipically more massive (often made of reinforced concrete), and the exterior tube is "lighter" (made of steel or concrete columns). Both tubes are conencted via horizontal elements which make up the floors and also transmit any horizontal froces from the facade to the core.

The building features a hybrid structure comprised of a high-strength concrete core surrounded by a robust, extremely resilient steel perimeter frame. The core wall system, made of reinforced concrete at the center of the tower, acts as the main spine, becoming the key to its strength. This core rises to the upper floors and acts as the building's primary support to resist gravity, wind, seismic and impact loads, as well as housing all means of egress.

The aerodynamic shape of the structure reduces wind loads and the amount of steel needed for its construction

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a seamless high-performance, low-emissivity glass enclosure with insulating joints, allowing natural light to reach over 90% of office areas. This reduces the need for electric lighting and associated cooling loads while enhancing the quality of the spaces.