On Friday, the developer opened the construction gates to cameramen and reporters, photographers and radio producers from across Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. They got likely their first look inside the recently topped-out tower, which is about a year from completion (last year, the anniversary events were held inside 7 World Trade Center, with the mayor in attendance). While being led around by Silverstein Senior Vice-President Dara McQuillan, The Observer got a glimpse of something we had yet to see: the swanky new elevators and minimalist bathrooms.

They are part of the lower floors set to be turned over to the Port Authority, part of a 2006 deal to finance and begin construction on the site. Silverstein Properties hopes to hand them off by the end of the month, Mr. McQuillan said, when the Port will bring in its own designers and engineers to fit out the space for thousands of office workers on more than 30 trapezoidal floors.

"It all fits with Maki's super minimal style," Mr. McQuillan said, taking us inside one of the elevators. He explained that the marble on the floor was selected and cut especially because of its similarity to wood grain. In the bathroom, the corner guards wear designed to lay flush with the tiles, instead of on top of them. The paper towel dispensers are hidden under the mirrors. Everything is clean, unobtrusive, almost perfect.

How do you make an office building, one of the biggest and newest in the city, disappear? It's the little things that count.

If it were possible for a skyscraper to quietly rise nearly a thousand feet into the sky with little notice, 4 World Trade Center would be the building to do it. It is not simply that its big brother across ground zero is stealing all the attention, though it is. When 1 World Trade Center tops out at the end of the week, following a Flag Day ceremony led by President Barack Obama, it will be another milestone for the site, one of the last. When 4 World Trade Center achieves the same fate sometime next month, will anyone notice? If not, that would be a shame, because this may well be the nicer of the two.

That a 977-foot tower has gone unnoticed is partly the point. Designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, 4 World Trade Center has a quiet splendor hidden within its still skin. Across the way, 1 World Trade Center is stolid, impenetrable, a symbol of recovery but also defensiveness. Seeing it now, from JFK or the Jersey Turnpike, a hole in the skyline filled, is thrilling, but like the original Twin Tower, 1 World Trade Center still imposes itself on the skyline. By contrast, 4 World Trade Center becomes a part of it.

Part of this comes from simple gestures, like the iridescent glass that makes the building disappear into the clouds, or the almost platonic geometries of the structure. And while the building may not have captured the notice of New Yorkers, tenants are keen on the building, with a number of them close to deals ranging from one floor to six or more, according to Silverstein Partners.

In a decade or more, when the entire site is finished, it will be a triumph, especially if each of the four towers can stand out as their own. One World Trade Center will certainly be the head of the family, while 4 World Trade will be the beautiful daughter everyone secretly adores.

If it were possible for a skyscraper to quietly rise nearly a thousand feet into the sky with little notice, 4 World Trade Center would be the building to do it. It is not simply that its big brother across ground zero is stealing all the attention, though it is. When 1 World Trade Center tops out at the end of the week, following a Flag Day ceremony led by President Barack Obama, it will be another milestone for the site, one of the last. When 4 World Trade Center achieves the same fate sometime next month, will anyone notice? If not, that would be a shame, because this may well be the nicer of the two.

That a 977-foot tower has gone unnoticed is partly the point. Designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, 4 World Trade Center has a quiet splendor hidden within its still skin. Across the way, 1 World Trade Center is stolid, impenetrable, a symbol of recovery but also defensiveness. Seeing it now, from JFK or the Jersey Turnpike, a hole in the skyline filled, is thrilling, but like the original Twin Tower, 1 World Trade Center still imposes itself on the skyline. By contrast, 4 World Trade Center becomes a part of it.

Part of this comes from simple gestures, like the iridescent glass that makes the building disappear into the clouds, or the almost platonic geometries of the structure. And while the building may not have captured the notice of New Yorkers, tenants are keen on the building, with a number of them close to deals ranging from one floor to six or more, according to Silverstein Partners.

In a decade or more, when the entire site is finished, it will be a triumph, especially if each of the four towers can stand out as their own. One World Trade Center will certainly be the head of the family, while 4 World Trade will be the beautiful daughter everyone secretly adores.

Now, it has finally launched its website with updated renderings and floorplans (spotted by Curbed) which finally helps us get what the building is all about.

The strange angles of previous renders made the building almost incomprehensible, but now we think we get it. It's a rectangle sitting on top of a rhombus on top of an irregular pentagon—if you're still confused, hopefully this slideshow helps clarify things a little bit.

Especially interesting is the absolutely outraged comments on Curbed, where people complain about another glass building coming to the Village. While it is true that brick and cast iron may have more character, this appears to be one of the more interesting buildings built in the neighborhood since, well, 41 Cooper Square, the new Cooper Union building finished a few years ago—which proves it is possible to do quite a bit more than just build a boring glass building, even if it winds up bankrupting the institution behind it in the process.

Just so long as this thing does not wind up looking like the atrocious "Sculpture for Living." When you think back to that—funky forms, famous architect—51 Astor can start to give one pause.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Construction loan locked down at 51 Astor.

Though the Edward J. Minskoff Equities tower has not yet signed any tenants, the 400,000-square-foot asset promises to be among the most technologically advanced buildings erected in Manhattan in the past decade, said the structure’s developer.

“It will surpass the Bank of America building [One Bryant Park] in some ways,” said Mr. Minskoff, who declined to speak about the specifics of the construction loan.

Minskoff is betting on the area near Cooper Union and on Manhattan’s need for updated office stock for a windfall of new tenants to the area. The only Class A office building in the submarket is at 610 Broadway, according to research from Cassidy Turley.

Rents at the Fumihiko Maki-designed tower will range from about $88 to $115 per square foot. The office will be completed and occupied by 2013, Mr. Minskoff said. “We’re having a lot of traction with tenants,” Mr. Minskoff said.

“It could be very successful certainly, but the price point makes me a little nervous,” said Robert Sammons, vice president at Cassidy Turley. “That’s Seagram building pricing.”

But the boutique office building could do fine with just one prestigious anchor tenant, added Mr. Sammons. “In reality, if he finds one or two Facebooks or Googles than he’s golden,” said Mr. Sammons of Mr. Minskoff.

The developer acquired the property for close to $100 million at the end of 2008 from Cooper Union, a school that is facing a $16.5 million budget deficit and, according to The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, is seriously considering charging tuition fees.

Mr. Minskoff insisted that the university, which owns the Chrysler building and leases it to Tishman Speyer long term, would not be putting any of its real estate on the block."

A spokesperson for Cooper Union said that the school has absolutely no intention of selling any real estate assets.

Bank of America did not return calls for comment.

An early proposal by Kevin Roche for a new U.N. tower—it's not Maki, but you get the idea. (KRJDA)

The United Nations has a long tradition of employing the world's finest architects.

The original Secretariat complex was the work of Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, two of the most revered designers ever to pick up a T-square. DC-1 and DC-2, the 1976 expansion of the campus better known as U.N. Plaza, was designed by Kevin Roche, builder of many New York towers and heir to the throne of Eero Saarinen.

In 2002, when it came time to plan for a new tower to house this globetrotting workforce, the United Nations Development Corporation, the city agency that handles all U.N. property, held a competition. It was open only to Pritzker Prize winners, and Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki was selected in 2004. Not long after, the project ran into political hurdles and was put on hold, but earlier this month Albany, the city and the U.N. reached a deal so the project can move forward. Almost as soon as the ink had dried on the land swap, Mr. Maki and his local partners, FXFowle, unrolled their blueprints and got back to work.

"We have a saying around the office," Dan Kaplan, a principal at FXFowle in charge of the project, told The Observer. "It takes a long time for things to happen suddenly."

Mr. Kaplan explained that much of the design work had been completed for a 35-story tower on the site, and while it will not change significantly, it does require some updating. Before, there were plans to build a temporary General Assembly on the playground before the new office tower was built, but that was instead constructed two years ago on the U.N.'s north lawn. The Secretariat is undergoing a $2 billion renovation, and after the earlier deal fell apart, the world body felt it could not wait to begin rebuilding its campus.

Tower goes here. (East Side Open Space)

Instead, the designers will reassess the U.N.'s space needs and tweak the designs accordingly. "We're not back to square-one, maybe square 1.5," Mr. Kaplan said. "It's a tight site and a tight building envelope, so I don't think the designs will change that much, but we are going back over everything." When Mr. Maki created his winning design, it drew upon the original Secretariat for inspiration, creating a long, narrow slab with those expansive east-west exposures.

''The thin slab is something quite unique because in America office buildings tend to be large and squarish,'' Mr. Maki told The Times in 2004, after it was revealed he would be designing the project. His most notable project in the city, if not the world, is Tower 4 at the World Trade Center, which is currently rising downtown. Among FXFowle's many New York projects are 11 Times Square, Northside Piers in Williamsburg and The New York Times Building, where the firm partnered with another Pritzker winner, Italy's Renzo Piano.

Jeffrey Feldman, president and CEO of the U.N. Development Corporation, said he hopes to have designs ready by early next year, so the project will be ready to go through the city' land-use review process. Integral as the U.N. is seen by many New Yorkers to our standing as capital of the world—unpaid parking tickets aside—its plans will likely face a good deal of scrutiny not only from U.N. opponents like the Heritage Foundation but also neighbors in Tudor City, who oppose the project because it will block their views of the East River and Queens.

"The plans could certainly change, but right now our focus is on reconstituting our team," Mr. Feldman said. If all goes as planned, the project will break ground in 2013.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the designer of U.N. Plaza as John Dinkerloo, Mr. Roche's partner. The Observer regrets the error.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The trip was for business, though the builders and architects who traveled to Carrara, Italy, no doubt derived some pleasure from seeing the lobby of 4 World Trade Center taking shape before their eyes. At a huge stonecutting facility in this Mediterranean town famous for its marble, the Silverstein team inspected the stones that will someday line the lobby of the Fumihiko Maki-designed tower, the first of three Silverstein projects at the site to be completed, with an expected opening of 2013.

As progress at Ground Zero became a palpable reality last year, these exclusive pictures of the lobby's construction and the trip serve as yet another reminder that construction really can happen at the World Trade Center site.

Slideshow: Inside the 4 World Trade Center Lobby. >>

Related: Watch 1 WTC Rise 52 Breathtaking Stories. >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Cooper Union has entered into a long-term lease for the site, currently an engineering building, with Edward J. Minskoff Equities, which will build and own the planned 440,000-square-foot mixed-use building. Studley’s Woody Heller represented Cooper Union on the deal.

The price of the building sale was not revealed. Mr. Minskoff plans a 430,000-square-foot, 13-story building in the square, according to the report.

Mr. Maki, of Maki and Associates, is also designing Tower 4, or 150 Greenwich Street, at the World Trade Center, the site for which was announced as fully excavated today.

If that’s not news, the 200-odd media people who turned out, many from national and international news outfits that cover developments like this from a distance, will try to believe really hard that it is. Instead of starchitects Richard Rogers, Sir Norman Foster and Fumihiko Maki, who attended last year’s unveiling of the actual designs, senior staff people from each of the three firms gave updates.

Yet the renderings looked remarkably the same, aside from a few details at street level.

“We feel much too much discussion of these projects being towers, and we can't hide the fact that they are,” Gary Kamemoto, director of Maki and Associates, said. “But what’s probably more important is, how do these very big buildings come down to the ground and create a life to reurbanize this part of lower Manhattan?”

An example from Tower 4, which his firm is designing: a polished black granite wall in the lobby which should reflect the World Trade Center memorial across Greenwich Street (see above). Sir Foster has placed glass elevators on the outer walls of his tower so that passers-by can watch traders going up to their floors (and vice versa). Mr. Rogers is planning a “media wall,” to be designed by an as-yet-unnamed artist, which would flash images and videos inside the office lobby but which would be visible from the street.

Mr. Silverstein has put up more images here.