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]
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.