Spire showdown. (dbox/SOM, Durst Organization)

Antenna or architecture?

The fate of the World Trade Center, having been debated and arbitrated by every constituency in town, now rests with a panel of architects and engineers in Chicago. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat is the international arbiter of skyscrapers the world over. All skyscrapers are not created equal, and it is up to the Council to decide exactly how tall they all are.

The problem at 1 World Trade Center, as has been raging across front pages all week, is that the Durst Organization, the august real estate family and minority partner in the city’s newly christened tallest structure, has convinced the Port Authority to forgo a radome, a white fiberglass sheath that was to have encased the 408-foot mast atop the 1,368-foot tower. The mast takes the tower from the symbolic height of the original towers to the perhaps too symbolic height of 1,776 feet, first envisioned by Daniel Libeskind a decade ago.

The problem is that the council does not recognize antennae, flagpoles, signage or other superfluous structures as contributing to the height of the building. That is why the Willis Tower, 1,451 feet, ranks eighth tallest in the world, even though two broadcasting arrays bring its total height to 1,729 feet, the second tallest in the world behind the Burj Khalifa.

This seems absolutely backwards—why encourage "spires," useless poles with a glimmer of design intent, while forgoing actual, functional structures like antenna and signage. Whatever happened to form follows function?

"It's a practical concern," Kevin Brass, public affairs manager for the council, said. "What is to stop someone from just adding on a taller and taller antenna?"

Indeed, the council was created in 1969 to settle such disputes. They have been raging since skyscrapers were rising, when 40 Wall Street, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State all tussled for pride of place on the skyline. Indeed, the Empire State is the 10th tallest building in the world if it's 204-foot antenna is included. Staring out at the city from across either river, visually, this is the height one registers, not the 1,250 feet where the original structure tops out.

“Is it part of the design, or is it a pole on top of the building? That is the question, and we don’t know the answer to it yet,” , Mr. Brass said of 1 World Trade Center. It is a question, then, of architectural intent. And the problem is that the architect of 1 World Trade Center, David Childs, is none too happy about the decision.

“Eliminating this integral part of the building’s design and leaving an exposed antenna and equipment is unfortunate,” he said in a widely disseminated statement. “We stand ready to work with the Port on an alternate design.”

The Port, and the Dursts, are less eager to do so. A spokesman for the developer, Jordan Barowitz, said that fabrication of the spire—they insist it is a spire, an architecturally integral piece of the design, and one that was indeed designed by Mr. Childs’ firm, SOM, albeit no longer clad in its fancy suit—is already underway, imperiling any additional design tweaks.

“It’s not really at risk for us, we’re building the building, we have to build it, whether the council says so, that’s the council’s business,” a World Trade Center source said.

SOM is holding out hope that the Port might persuade the developer, who took a management stake in the building in 2010 for $100 million, to add some sort of design flourish. It has had to compromise on the base of the tower, after all, after serious fabrication issues. (It bears noting that that was seen as a diminishment, as well.) But the mast must be installed this summer to keep the building on schedule, which does not leave much time for a solution to be designed, fabricated and installed.

Port Authority chief Pat Foye does not seem eager to implement a change, either. “What was designed was impractical, unworkable and quite frankly dangerous to workers who would have to be called in to maintain it, and that’s not something we nor Durst could abide,” he told reporters after a conference on Friday.

The Dursts insist it was not the $20 million cost of the radome that killed it but the maintenance scheme, which was complex, expensive and possibly even dangerous, involving the hoisting of one-ton replacement pieces into place. SOM was given eight months to come up with a more satisfactory scheme but could not.

Still, if anyone could convince the council the tower is indeed as tall as the developers say it is, it is the Dursts. For years they were toiling away on the impressive if not especially tall One Bryant Park, standing a hail 945 feet. Atop it stood what could only be described as a white toothpick, pushing the height of the building to 1,200-feet, and supplanting the Chrysler Building as New York’s second tallest.

It was a move as brash as the one undertaken by Walter Chrysler to surpass 40 Wall Street, when he deployed a hidden 60-foot spire within the dome of the Art Deco dandy, during the original skyscraper race. No matter—it was surpassed within a year by the Empire State Building. Just as 1 World Trade Center someday will be.

Numerous predecessors were pointed out, including one official entry by two students to the master planning competition. Now, a China-based reader sends along another from his side of the world, and it looks like almost an exact replica, down to the circular array surrounding the antenna.

The project in question is the Tianjin Post Telecom Tower (pictured), designed by C.Y. Lee, who is best known for the Taipei 101. That was the world's tallest tower from 2004 until last year, when the Burj Khalifa overtook it by a good 1,000 feet.

This tower is far shorter, only 350 feet, or about one-fifth the size of the (now slightly taller) 1 World Trade Center. Still, if you compare the two, the similarities are definitely there. And this one was finished in 1997. If only we knew whether Mr. Childs had spent much time in Tianjin. According to our reader, SOM has done a number of projects in Tianjin, but they are the work of the firm's San Francisco office.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

--David Childs, chief architect at 1 World Trade Center, speaking to Steve Cuozzo [via Matt Chaban]

Asked yesterday what was going through his mind, Childs wasn't weighing his words. He might have spoken for millions when he told us that bringing bin Laden to justice "vindicates all the work we're doing in rebuilding. It's going to be better than ever and this evil monster is gone."

With Bin Laden gone, maybe it won't be so hard to find new tenants anymore.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Now another sign of progress is taking shape, as Oregon's Benson Industries is preparing to ship more than 13,000 glass and steel curtain wall panels to the site. Laid out they would cover almost 1 million square feet, about a third the square-footage of the entire completed tower. The cladding (architect-speak for windows and siding) for the David Childs-designed building will begin going up in the coming months, ahead of the tower's projected 2014 completion.

This video, which recently turned up on Curbed, may look mundane to the untrained eye, but it has its telling moments--mixed in with all the stilted patriotism. First, it looks like Benson did a pretty good job, more sparkling 7 WTC than palid Goldman Sachs. Second, around the 1:20 mark you can see the unique corner panels that will make up the tower's unusual champfered facade--a real treat for architecture geeks.

Third, and most importantly, the quality of these panels will most likely determine the quality of the building. One of the most controversial things about 1 WTC is its imposing 200-foot concrete base, meant as a terrorist deterrent. Sadly, it also could function as a people deterrent. Mr. Childs and Larry Silverstein promised to compensate with a prismatic base, more beacon than bulwark. As these first panels go up, not only will they demonstrate continued progress on the tower, but it will also be an opportunity to glimpse whether or not the tower will be a success.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

Mr. Childs, who designed 7 World Trade Center and the Time Warner Center, among others, takes over from Phillip K. Howard, the New York attorney who wrote The Death of Common Sense. His ascension to chair comes as the society starts a new era with its leadership. The man at the agency's helm for much of the past four decades, president Kent Barwick, has retired, giving preservation advocate Vin Cipolla control over the group.

The Municipal Art Society has been around for decades, weighing in on various planning and development initiatives. Of late, they've been particularly active on the city's plan to redo Coney Island and the on and off plans to expand Penn Station, known as Moynihan Station (Mr. Childs is the lead architect for this project).

Childs: Well, I love them, frankly. And I also believe that architects should be involved in the cities in which they live. So I therefore have been involved in a lot of city planning through [the Municipal Art Society]. I’ve been around and have been involved in those things. We also have a very large office that, frankly, loves to do very large, complicated projects.

What’s your secret for negotiating all the bureaucratic and political obstacles?

Bureaucratic isn’t so bad. I’m a big believer in community review: You get some of your best insights sometimes from those types of processes.

The most important thing that an architect does—and this was taught to me by I.M. Pei many years ago—is choosing your plan. Sometimes, in the development world, we have had some developers whose aspirations didn’t meet the project that they were doing.

And that’s the dirty work. Any great architect can do something spectacular for City Hall. Sometimes a person who owns the piece of property, you can drag them from doing a B-minus building to doing a B-plus building, and you have achieved a lot. But it is a tough thing to do.

You have said in the past that you wouldn’t mind it if people looked at one of your buildings and never said, “That’s a David Childs building.”

That’s wonderful. Often, architects can have a very clear style. Frankly, I believe that there are certain fundamentals with every project, but stylistically, they vary considerably. That’s because every project is different because of its site, location and program.

I am particularly happy in a project like the World Trade Center. I think it’s kind of funny to have an architect’s name attached to it. It should be the World Trade Center Tower 1, not the Childs Tower.

How do you think your building will fit in with those at the trade-center site by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki?

When Larry [Silverstein] and I first got together after 9/11, he said, “I want you to be my Yamasaki [the architect of the original World Trade Center].” And I told him, “Larry, you won’t believe this, but I think that you should have many architects. I believe that because it is too big for one person to do.”

He asked me to recommend a list of architects, which I did. I think they have made a good effort to work together.

So you prescreened those three?

My list was longer, but those three were there.

As for Moynihan Station, how are you going to get a basketball arena in the back end of the Farley Post Office?

We’re not. Madison Square Garden is to get [the arena] in the back of Farley. They’ve got an architect from Toronto who is doing that.

So you are just doing the front end?

I would say they would think their front door would be Ninth Avenue. We’re doing the Farley, and I must say what I think is wonderful is what has happened under this developer [a partnership between Vornado Realty and the Related Companies]. They have this combined vision of doing a whole building from Seventh to Eighth [avenues]. Right now, we are trying to look at the biggest picture to do what might be the most extraordinary project ever done.

I thought a different architect might be brought in for each building.

They are! There are many other sites Vornado has in the area. I know that Cesar Pelli will be involved, KPF, our friend Norman Foster and ourselves. The site itself has another 5.5 million square feet.

What is your reaction to the comment that the Freedom Tower will look like a fortress?

That is the most ridiculous thing. It’s stated by people who haven’t even looked at the plans. We did a new design in which the whole building is fractionally larger than the core of the old building. Now we have transfer floors, so this building is a fraction of what it was.

And yes, we have to have a high percentage of solid in that base to get to a point where, any blast from the street, people will be protected where they work.

I had originally thought, in the original proposal, that the base of the building would be stone or metal. In the end, I decided to make it glass. The whole base is cast glass, which is not flat; it is a cast glass with ridges in it that are actually prisms.

Basically, glass over concrete?

No more so than this is glass over concrete [pointing to his window]. Where it is not glass looking through, it is a glass skin that, when light hits it, it breaks into color behind it. I think it will be the most clear, transparent, light color—I think we hit a home run here. When people see it, they are going to love it.

- Matthew Schuerman

From left, the Freedom Tower (David Childs) as we know and love it; and designs unveiled today for 200 Greenwich Street (or Tower 2, by Sir Norman Foster), 175 Greenwich Street (or Tower 3, by Sir Richard Rogers), and 150 Greenwich Street (or Tower 4 by Fumihiko Maki).

-Matthew Schuerman

Still, nothing is built there.

The Con Ed site is hardly alone. Ground Zero is crawling upward, and Bruce Ratner’s plan for a 22-acre site in downtown Brooklyn is struggling with vocal neighborhood opposition.

But while the masters of those sites have grappled with, paid off, charmed or waged P.R. campaigns against their critics, Mr. Solow—whose plans for the site include seven high-rises, between 3,000 and 4,000 apartments and about one million square feet of office space—has remained aloof.

That may be ending now.

Mr. Solow recently hired the lobbying and public-relations firm Geto & De Milly—the same firm that is handling Mr. Ratner’s project—to do his community and political liaising.

And he has made a politic concession—however slight, the first one yet in evidence—to his opponents. He has agreed to lower the height of the buildings and increase their footprints to make up for the lost space, and to reorient the buildings so that street lines can run through the site and almost right up to the river’s edge.

The new drawings were shown around to elected officials and the community board this summer, but to little more fanfare than when the original plan was unveiled last fall.

“He took a little bit of the top off of the buildings but did not change the density,” said City Councilman Daniel Garodnick, who represents the area. “They are too tall and too dense; there’s not a single unit of affordable housing; and from a services perspective, the number of people who could be introduced into the neighborhood—it is like dropping the entire population of Kennebunkport between 34th and 41st Street.”

Considering that Kennebunkport only has 3,720 people in it, make that two Kennebunkports—with lots of Republicans, Yalies and generally rich people inhabiting them.

Michael Gross, a spokesman for Mr. Solow’s partnership, East River Realty, told The Observer: “We’ve substantially revised our master plan to respond to community concerns, and we look forward to a continued constructive dialogue with community leaders and elected officials as we continue the planning process.”

He wouldn’t discuss whether the project would include affordable housing. It’s not necessary under the zoning that Mr. Solow has proposed, but elected officials have come to expect some sort of sweetener if asked to rezone large swaths of land for profitable development.

Dan Golub, senior policy advisor to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who has met with Mr. Solow’s advisors, said that they may end up including affordable housing under pressure.

“As of now, they haven’t stepped up on their own to make a serious affordable-housing commitment,” Mr. Golub told The Observer. “But at some point in the process, they know they’re going to be forced to, and they’d be better off doing it sooner rather than later. They can’t make it a golden ghetto.”

The Bloomberg administration has said nothing publicly about the proposal, since it is in the preliminary stages of review, but other officials have been critical. Former State Assemblyman Steve Sanders once predicted “one of the biggest development fights” over what is the largest undeveloped parcel in Manhattan after the World Trade Center, but it has not generated much interest outside the confines of Murray Hill.

The 5.1-million-square-foot development right now sits in limbo as the developer figures out the final specifications and the Department of City Planning moves to the next review phase. Two hearings this spring brought out large crowds that objected to the project.

But Mr. Solow, who developed 9 West 57th Street in the 1970’s and luxury projects on the Upper East Side more recently, hasn’t gone too soft, and it is unclear just what City Hall—and the City Council—will do once he makes his application to rezone the area from manufacturing to commercial.

The one place that Mr. Solow has budged is height. The luxury towers, which are being designed by David Childs and Richard Meier, once reached as high as 864 feet, or 57 stories; the tallest one is now about 700 feet, according to individuals who have seen the latest plan. That’s still taller than the 505-foot United Nations Secretariat building a few blocks north, and Mr. Solow has made up for the lost floors by making the buildings wider and adding an eighth tower.

In addition, in a nod to residents who wanted more access and views of the East River, Mr. Solow’s architects have turned the buildings in an east-west direction and extended the streets almost to the F.D.R. Drive, where he would also add a raised promenade.

“The community board took the position that other buildings that have been built between 34th and 41st Street are all about 400 feet tall,” said John West, the co-chairman of the Board 6 subcommittee on the Con Ed site. “That’s still a substantial apartment building, but 400 feet is enough shorter than 500 feet that we consider them to be deferentially shorter than the Secretariat. We like that word deferentially shorter, because it conveys what we are trying to express.”

Marilyn Taylor, a partner at Skidmore Owings and Merrill, Mr. Childs’ architectural firm, presented the revised site plan earlier this summer to Board 6. Mr. Solow, though he has met board members previously, wasn’t present; Mr. Childs and Mr. Meier were also absent.

“Marilyn Taylor maintains a degree of credibility,” Mr. West told The Observer. “She sticks by the party line but doesn’t over-promise. She said that they had been listening to us and had some changes they thought were in the right direction—and to the extent that they were, great. But there were many points at which they were not.”

Mr. West and others on the community board say they do not substantially disagree with the density that Mr. Solow is proposing. In fact, an alternative rezoning plan that Board 6 has formally proposed calls for just 25 percent less square footage, and none of it would be office space.

The board’s own plan would require affordable housing to reach that density, though, as well as improving the esplanade along the East River.