Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 18:34:01 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC Related Reports The news story I recently sent to the list about the conflicting visions of transportation hubs on the site and memorialists' desire to keep traffic away led Joe Wright and Cecil Shepherd to send me a more comprehensive story about the meeting at which Pataki's appointees Tomson and Seymour laid down their transportation-related ideas. This story,from the New York Times,set out an approach that has been contradicted by other anti-Towers rationalizations that have been offered by the "human scale" planning crowd. Previously they've been telling us how the concentrated office space demand of the old Financial District has been irrevocably exploded... countless firms having left for good and a rethink of space usage being needed as there is no point in putting back as much office space as before. Now,however,they are saying they won't be able to put enough office space on the old WTC site...of course,this is SOLELY because they refuse to build tall enough...and therefore think they'll need to condemn surrounding blocks to build MORE short buildings!! Any office space needed should FIRST be in restored Twin Towers. Built properly they should have no trouble attracting tenants, especially if there ISN'T superfluous new construction on surrounding blocks. If they take up all the tenants that surrounding office buildings might get otherwise,then the older buildings might consider residential conversion.And if there really isn't enough office demand to fill full-sized new Twin Towers,then some portion of the new Towers can be set aside for other uses as well! Looks like they want to forge ahead with building small and accomodating building small,when there is still no excuse to build small. Next up is an informative report from a mailing list member who goes by Rayden Tron...followed by my comments. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rayden Tron Subject: WTC Report Here is my report on rebuilding-related issues from BuildingsNY, a trade show/conference held at the Javits Center June 18-19. Feel free to share this with the rest of the mailing list. June 18: Attended session on "Technology Trends in Commercial Building Security". Speaker was Ahmed Elsayed of Honeywell International. While not WTC specific, this conference provided insights into what is available commercially today and in the near future. Honeywell's EBI (Enterprise Building Integrator) is one such product that seems very much like a rudimentary version of my own Project AVATAR, combining digital video, facial recognition, zonal HVAC control, energy monitoring, troubleshooting, asset tagging, and up-to-date fire/life safety information over a distributed network. Tenants would be able to access some information over the network to serve their own needs. This is the kind of system which would make a superskyscraper complex easily and efficiently managable, with plenty of added value to entice tenants. Johnson Controls is another company involved in this sort of integrated system work. Checked out the exhibitors' hall for my continued research into technology. I noticed from the displays that the Twins are very much with the professionals in heart and mind. No other conclusion is feasible. If a company spends thousands of dollars on a fancy trade show booth and another couple thousand to staff it, they plan on being very conscientous on the image they present, and the frequent display of the Twins in pictures, in logos, and in skylines in row after row of exhibitors was very encouraging. June 19: Attended session on "Working Together to Rebuild New York". Speaker was Leevi Kiil of HLW and President of the New York Chapter of the AIA. There was much said here about outreach from professional architects and collaborating with the general public. The AIA (American Institute of Architects) is also highly aware of the upcoming Listening to the City II. As an illustration of the power of collaboration, he gave the Challenge America With Erin Brockovich project on the Lower East Side, where a park needing a year of repairs at a cost of $5 million was renovated in 6 days gratis. The AIA has also been a major provider of the "templates" the LMDC will use in weighing options for rebuilding. I am in the process of obtaining the 50-page report detailing these "templates" and the impacts they would have on the cityscape. The "superblock" concept appears to be in serious trouble. Almost all of the templates, aside from the one where the entire site is set aside for a memorial, involve the restoration of streets or even the addition of new ones. It seems that their focus is inordinately on providing "corridors of open space" and on "ground-level" activity. There was also mention of "fascination with height" as if it were a bad thing. Sure, much of human activity is focused on ground level, but the ground represents the mundane, the day-to-day, the ordinary, while height expresses hope, the extraordinary, achievement. In an eerie echo of the earliest conceptual models of the original WTC before the final building configuration was decided on, the AIA conducted massing studies for various building sizes and forms from 10 to 80 stories. Afterwards, I asked Mr. Kiil if anything over 80 stories was considered in these studies, he said no. When I then asked if that was because nothing over 80 stories was considered feasible or the percentage change in the results would be insufficient to warrant a separate study, he said both, but he could be wrong about the first reason. I said, "I hope so." Attended session on "Rebuilding the World Trade Center". Speakers were Daniel A. Cuoco of Thorton-Tomasetti and Robert F. Borg, Chairman of the Construction Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers. This one seemed to be a bit of a misnomer, because much of the presentation dealt with the recovery efforts and the challenge of clearing the site, of which Mr. Cuoco's firm was in charge of coordinating. His firm also designed the Winter Garden, which should reopen later this year. Among the options being discussed would make the Winter Garden part of a transit hub including the PATH. Mr. Borg's presentation I found more problematic. He started right off the bat with ideas on rapid egress and tall buildings. I jumped right on it, suggesting floor plans that maximized distance between stairwells in the core, hardening the elevator shafts, use of technology to provide real-time info on safe exits, calls for staged evacuation, and operable elevators for fire department use. He asked for input on what would be a good building height. 110 stories? Again, I jumped in, pointing my index fingers up, saying, "Higher! 125 stories!" He used an analogy comparing a rapid egress to streams flowing into a river, focusing on the images of people heading down as firefighters headed up..claiming stairwells would have to be wider at the bottom, like a river being wider at its mouth, putting buildings taller than 80 stories at an economic disadvantage because of space devoted to said stairwells. After the session, I was talking to Mr. Cuoco about work he mentioned his firm having done on the Petronas Towers. Much of the in-session questions dealt with the condition of the slurry wall and on a similar slurry wall that allowed the WFC to be mounted right on bedrock. I verified that the Petronas Towers were not mounted on bedrock, but on concrete pylons. I then added that Asian nations are still going forward with grander plans on crappier sites. (I know this is the case with most of the recent Asian projects..) Mr. Borg then mentioned he had been "intrigued" by my ideas. I elaborated on them, then went after his "river" analogy. Decent flood control systems do not converge everything into a wider mouth at the bottom, but instead maintain several parallel, smaller streams. I then remarked that good river control is maintained by a series of dams, ensuring no one section of the river is overwhelmed, analogous to a staged evacuation, which could easily be managed by an intelligent agent already familiar to tenants. Said agents could also monitor elevator safety to the satisfaction of normally-reluctant firefighters. I also brought up examples of other recent high-rise fires in New York. Complete rapid evacuation was neither needed nor advised, and the fires were confined to the floor, if not just the unit involved. Should we design for the one-in-a-million occurrence, or focus on a stable, robust, highly efficient design for the other 999,999 events that will work pretty well anyway for the one-in-a-million event? He said he was not against the idea of supertall buildings, but he said he was glad I have put a great deal of thought into such needs and that I should be sure to incorporate them into my designs. In all, I thought this was a pretty productive conversation. On a separate note, re the PATH station, word from PATH is that the Exchange Place station needs installation of a new interlocking (set of switch crossovers) involving blasting through bedrock to clear the space. It should re-open by mid-2003. A temporary station should be in place in Lower Manhattan by early 2004. It will be a stand-alone facility (without other subway connections) passing under the Verizon Building, the Building 7 site, the 1/9 subway tunnels, and exiting near the Post Office west of Church Street. Until then.....See you all at LTTCII. I don't eat out much so I don't have any site recommendations for the networking dinner. ---------- End forwarded message ---------- My comments: Robert Borg,as I think I mentioned previously,was the only person ahead of me in line at the May 23 hearing...he had stuff promoting the report he had done for his ASCE committee, and I let him read my printed commentary. He was saying the same thing about needing extra stair space, and the problem of firefighters going up the same stairs people are evacuating down...I think this is addressed by my concept of adding four stairwell cores toward (not in!) the building corners that each contain two stairwells.One can be designated as the "up" staircase for emergencies if both are usable. The superblock issues are going to need fighting...in case any aren't aware of the situation,the WTC site combined twelve city blocks,being bounded by West Street to the West and Church Street (Trinity Place below the SE corner of the site) on the East, and Vesey Street to the North and Liberty Street to the South. To create this block,Greenwich Street,which follows the pre-settlement natural coastline of Manhattan,and Washington Street,which was on landfill to the west of it(but east of West Street) were closed through the site north to south;the east-west streets that were closed were Fulton(one block south of Vesey),Dey,and Cortlandt working north to south. Fulton was always something of a major artery...the famous Fulton Fish Market is near its east end.Dey and Cortlandt were less busy, and change names to John Street and Maiden Lane respectively when they reach Broadway. Restoring all five closed streets would divide the WTC site into twelve little pieces...downtown blocks are notably smaller than midtown blocks and give comparatively little space for development of both structures and open space free of traffic. What seems most aggressively promoted is the restoration of Fulton and Greenwich Streets,which would divide the site into four pieces, two smaller ones to the north and two larger ones to the south. Right now Greenwich Street stops at Barclay Street,a block north of Vesey,but it will be brought down to Vesey...not NECESSARILY for vehicular traffic...when the new 7 WTC is built,not blocking it the way the old one did. The Towers were south of Fulton and west of Greenwich,and the ultra- memorialists want that entire seven-acre quadrant to be reserved for a memorial.They don't like bringing Greenwich back because it can bring traffic close to the memorial...we don't like it because it would help isolate the old Tower site from new construction. Whether or not the new Towers are ON the old footprints,a street in between would make it hard to build even near them. My preferred solution restores Greenwich Street ONLY as far south as Fulton,and runs a streetcar line that crosses West Street on a bridge along Fulton Street and across town to the Fish Market. This helps handle the connection of Battery Park City to the rest of the area across West Street,both by pedestrian use of the bridge and by travel on the streetcars.The station at Greenwich and Fulton can serve as a gateway to the new Towers,the retail areas beneath, and the surrounding area,and other stations can handle subway/PATH transfers. With the superblock intact south of Fulton Street,there are many more options for developing that land(and of course the only ones worth considering include gigantic new Towers!). WPIX-TV,Channel 11,has reportedly "scooped" the six options that Beyer Blinder Belle are supposed to announce on July 1st,and which will be the focus of the Listening to the City II agenda July 20th. Surprising considering that the Whitehead clique still have not released the revision of the "Draft Principles and Preliminary Blueprint" that was due June 5th! I have been unable to find the reported drawings of the options on their website...perhaps someone else can locate them.Both wpix.com and wb11.com redirect you to http://wb11.trb.com/ . According to the summaries on the NYCS board the options are: Empty park/memorial small buildings around a park small office buildings,next to a memorial the 70-story office tower with skeleton frame on top two 90-story towers One tall (not stated HOW tall) tower. The last two are the only ones that deserve any support, support aimed at modifying them in the direction needed. When we see more details we can decide on a more detailed response. 90-story twins are what I have figured for months would be the "sensible compromise" the powers-that-be would offer the pro-Towers contingent,in order to paint us as unreasonable if we insist that the new Towers must be no retreat whatsoever from the old.We need to continue insisting on the full-sized Towers nonetheless. I mentioned several mailings ago that there were people on the skyscraperpage.com board saying that new buildings with a "modern" height to floor ratio would be fine...speaking of 15 feet per story,where the Twin Towers managed to fit a story in a little over 12.I noted that with a 15-foot ratio a 92-story building would be 1380 feet,where with the ratio Yamasaki built into the Twins,111 stories could be fit into that height. Inefficiency is not something to embrace,even if it's "modern". Nineteen extra floors can help make a building pay for itself; and if floors are farther apart,there are not only fewer rentable floors but less of each floor is rentable.Remember that if you have to go downstairs 1380 feet,the stairs don't get any shorter because there are fewer floors along the way...and going a longer distance from floor to floor at the same pitch means a larger staircase.(I suppose they could compensate with smaller elevators because fewer people would work in the buildings...but evacuating a 92nd floor 1365 feet up is harder than evacuating one 1110 feet up). Greg C on the NYCS board indicated a willingness to settle for fewer-story towers of height equal to the old,but I think such towers would always be known as ones with fewer stories and less space than the old ones.Better to at least match the old towers in every respect. The "one tall tower" option...well,it had better be more than an ornament in its upper reaches,and be EXTREMELY tall.Replacing two 1360 foot buildings with one doesn't come close to full rebuilding. Stephen and Novus on the NYCS board are looking to put together a "platform" to campaign on,publishing flyers,independent of this list or TTT or any other group.Stephen doesn't give an email address there and Novus gives one that bounces.Could someone there ask them to contact me at le@put.com? I do prefer the minimalist "platform" Alex offered in response to their too-specific one...just that whatever else there is, full-size new Twins must be somewhere on the superblock.Unite behind that goal,then worry about details once it's secured. Jason Fane suggested that the construction unions might be worth contacting for support,since there's more work for them on large projects.I don't know if they'd be easily bought off with equal square footage at lower altitudes...thoughts? Monday is the public hearing at the Marriott on the WTC collapse, followed by the meeting of the Civic Alliance later that day. Next Wednesday is the public comment deadline for the Phase I RFP by Whitehead & Co.,the address is renewnyc@empire.state.ny.us if emailing. -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.