Architecture

Two World Trade Center in BIG trouble?

The Two World Trade Center plot will remain dormant until a new tenant is found
DBOX/BIG
The Two World Trade Center plot will remain dormant until a new tenant is found
DBOX/BIG

Resembling a set of stacked toy blocks, BIG's unusual Two World Trade Center looked sure to become a future NYC landmark. However, the Wall Street Journal reports that tenants News Corp and 21st Century Fox have pulled out of the project, leaving its future in doubt.

The well-placed Wall Street Journal (News Corp owns Dow Jones, which publishes the newspaper) reports that 21st Century Fox and News Corp higher-ups Lachlan and James Murdoch issued a joint statement to the effect that relocating to the 408 m (1,340 ft) skyscraper would be too distracting and expensive.

The companies will instead remain at their current headquarters, 1,211 Sixth Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, until at least 2025. For now then, the Two World Trade Center project – which is the last of the significant towers slated for the new World Trade Center site – will be put on hold until a new tenant can be found.

Even if this does indeed come to pass, it remains to be seen whether BIG's eye-catching stacked block form will be retained or if the project will go back to the drawing board.

Source: Wall Street Journal [paywall]

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11 comments
KarlMueller
Just go ahead and put in a Walmart instead. What could be more American?
fb36
Asymmetric is ugly (at least for me).
pwndecaf
It looks like it is tipping over. Not a good look for something called World Trade Center. Ugly, too.
Stephen Colbourne
Please go back to the drawing board. It looks plain ugly to me. I would never do business in a place that looks so badly designed.
RandomPerson1234
Make replica of one world Trade Center and bring back a new twin towers
jayedwin98020
I'm wondering who allowed, and approved the current "building block" design.
It looks like the designer(s) asked their children, or grand children, to design a new building for them, and then left them alone for five minutes, with a bag of children's building blocks. The scary thing is, the designers went with their kid's idea.
If the current design is the best the designers can come up with, then retirement should be considered for their immediate future.
CharlieSeattle
Resembling a CHEAP set of FUGLY stacked toy blocks.
Gizmowiz
Why not just build a lego building style similar to the blocks? How American is that? Have it sprial upwards in a helix like DNA and link at the top for the strength to keep it up.
Gizmowiz
American architects seem to have no pizazz at all. Look at the buildings going up in Taiwan, Dubai, China, etc. America is the land of the free but certainly not the land of the innovative any more.
Calson
It is odd that the old ugly towers of the World Trade Center would be replaced by an even uglier building. Who is deciding which architects to use as these "deciders" should be replaced.