• Office Towers
  • Freedom Tower
  • Tower 2
  • Tower 3
  • Tower 4
  • Tower 5
  • 7 WTC
• Memorial & Museum
  • Design
  • Architects
  • Schedule
• Transportation Hub
  • Design
  • Architect
• Retail
• Performing Arts Center
  • Architect
• WTC Design Team
  • Firms
  • Team Members
• Visiting the WTC
  • At The World Trade Center
  • Around the WTC
  • What's Ahead at the WTC
• WTC History
  • WTC Origins
  • Original Construction
  • WTC Leaseholder
  • Rebuilding the WTC
• WTC Construction Lingo

Freedom Tower

The Freedom Tower will rise into the sky in a faceted, crystalline form filled with, and reflecting, light. The tower's design is intended to evoke the slender, tapering triangular forms of great New York City icons such as the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building. The design is an innovative mix of architecture, structure, urban design, safety, and sustainability.

As the tower rises from the square 200-foot concrete base, its square edges will be chamfered back, transforming the square into eight tall isosceles triangles in elevation. At its middle, the tower will form a perfect octagon and then culminate in a square, glass parapet rotated 45 degrees from the base. The resulting crystalline form will capture an ever-evolving display of refracted light: As the sun moves through the sky or onlookers move around the tower, the surfaces will appear like a kaleidoscope, changing throughout the day as light and weather conditions vary.

The Freedom Tower will have 69 office floors, a restaurant, an enclosed observation deck, and a two-level broadcast facility. The design also provides for below-grade shopping and access to the PATH, subway trains, and World Financial Center.

Base

The tower rises from a cubic base whose square footprint - 200 feet by 200 feet - will be the same size as the footprints of the original Twin Towers. The base will be clad in more than 2,000 pieces of prismatic glass, each measuring 4 feet by 13 feet 4 inches, with varying depths. The design utilizes the optical properties of prismatic glass to reflect, refract, and transmit light in various spectrums, creating a dynamic, shimmering glass surface that drapes the tower's base. The prismatic glass was developed over the course of two years in conjunction with some of the world's top glass manufacturers, who worked with architects to find ways of constructing prismatic glass at a scale not formerly made.

Plaza

An architectural conception with precedents ranging from Bryant Park and the steps at the Metropolitan Museum to the base of Renaissance palazzos will allow the building to flow out into the plazas to create areas for people to gather, sit, relax, and reflect. Ribbons of stainless steel will cascade down from behind the prismatic glass façade of the base to form a series of step terraces that integrate the horizontal surfaces of the plaza into the vertical surface of the building. The terraces, made of textured stainless steel, will be shaded by a ring of trees that further humanizes the scale of the space. The plaza will be richly textured with small sets of granite cobblestones.

Generous open spaces will be filled with trees, water, and places of respite for tenants and the estimated 3 million annual visitors to the WTC site. Designed in collaboration with landscape architects Peter Walker and Partners, these areas will connect the tower with adjacent neighborhoods and allow views and access into the memorial. Glass walls at the plaza edges will provide protection from the wind. While incorporating enhanced security measures, the building will remain open and accessible.

Antenna

The antenna will consist of two major components: a 408-foot mast and a communications platform ring. The mast is a hybrid structure, consisting of a steel tower supporting the antennae and a special protective enclosure, called a radome, which will be transparent to radio waves. The steel tower will have eight sections stacked vertically and decreasing in width, while the radome enclosure will be formed of a modular, fiberglass composite sandwich panel system arranged in an octagonal antiprism. This folded-plate enclosure structure is the first of its kind to be used in antenna construction. The panels will work as simple plates in bending, as is the case for most cladding, but the folded-plate structure will exploit the spatial geometry and in-plane sheer stiffness of the ensemble of the panels to resist wind loading. The geometry of the radome shell is based on a repeating modular system that allows for easy replacement and erection and also creates a protected maintenance area that is unique in the antenna industry.

At the base of the mast, a tetrahedral lattice ring will support point-to-point microwave dishes, steerable Electronic News Gathering antennas, and pole-type radio communication antennas. To add more support against wind, eight radio-frequency (RF) transparent Kevlar guy cables will be connected from the mast back to the ring. Window-washing equipment will be incorporated into the antenna ring structure. Because of its circular shape, this design will make it possible to service the building with only three maintenance units. The ring and mast structures were created in conjunction with structural engineers from the Stuttgart firm of Schlaich Bergermann und Partner.

When lit at night, the mast's surface will appear as a faceted surface, while a beacon at the top will send out a horizontal light beam that can be seen from miles away.

Curtain Wall

For the curtain wall, architects worked with industry experts to develop glass of a new monumental scale that is capable of withstanding the wind pressure experienced by a super-tall building while also meeting stringent security requirements. The five-foot by 13-foot-four-inch insulated glass panels will span the full floor-to-floor height with no intermediate mullion - a first in skyscraper construction. These glass panels will allow for maximum daylighting and impart monumental scale to the project.

Lobbies

Entrances on all four sides of the buildings, each 60 feet high and ranging in width from 30 feet on the east and west sides to 50 feet on the north side and 70 feet on the south side, will activate the building at street level.

The west portal will provide entrance to both the lobby of the observation deck on the concourse level and the transportation infrastructure. Visits to the observation deck will begin with an extraordinary elevator ride. The "scenic" elevators will transport visitors vertically through a super-tall building, with the 1,300-foot ascent/decent taking approximately 50 seconds. The east portal will provide access for office tenants and restaurant patrons who will then ascend to the top of the building.

The north and south entrances, which will provide access for commercial office tenants, will be marked by an array of dichroic glass panels. These panels, composed of multiple layers of clear, etched and dichroic glass, will draw on the spectral qualities of light to create vibrant color patterns across the surfaces of the lobby. The design draws on the results of a year-long research project into the optical effects of dichroic glass in transmission and reflection.

The grand lobby will encircle the central core and be filled with natural light that will enter the space through the east and west entrances as well as through apertures in the north and south walls. This light-filled lobby will provide a setting for changing art exhibits of various mediums.