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September 25, 2006 10:13 PM

Just over five years ago, we saw them come down. Now, watch them go up.
posted by keswick (26 comments total)

Excelent soundtrack.
posted by delmoi at 11:03 PM on September 25, 2006

Flash 8; they hate linux.
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:04 PM on September 25, 2006

hmm. it just spins and spins. oh, i see, flash 8. could be worth a note on each of those links.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:08 PM on September 25, 2006

Three floors in ten days. So the whole thing could have been put up in less then 70 days. How long did it actually take? I was under the impression that it whent up really damn quick.
posted by delmoi at 11:08 PM on September 25, 2006

Minoru Yamasaki was the architect. I toured his offices back in the seventies. Friends of mine, who lived in Detroit at the time, said he wasn't able to buy a home in Bloomfield Hills due to his Japanese-American ancestry. You know how it works--someone else makes a better offer.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:22 PM on September 25, 2006

posted by jchgf at 11:29 PM on September 25, 2006

hmm, the fill from the dig created 22 acres of new land.

22 acres = ~1M sqft.

The office space of the twin towers was 3.8M sqft.

So ... if they had just dug the hole and built a 4 story building on the resulting landfill ... they'd have had the equivalent civil engineering result? ? ?

Then again I guess Big Money pays Big Rents for being High Up, not a 4th floor location on the Hudson.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:35 PM on September 25, 2006

I don't think there are many 22 acre buildings, I doubt it would have been that much cheaper then the WTC.
posted by delmoi at 11:42 PM on September 25, 2006

Since there was a link to a WTC collapse video in the post, I'd like to point to one of the most impressive views of the collapse of the South Tower shot by a cameraman who managed to keep his lens aimed at the tower in wide low angle while running away from the scene (you can see an excerpt at 2:10 in this rather insensitive montage). If anyone can find a link to the complete sequence, please post it.
posted by jchgf at 12:03 AM on September 26, 2006

Watching the "Building the WTC" video reminds me of why I don't like skyscrapers and why I don't like to go in 'em.

They're made of spit and bubblegum wrappers and held up in the air merely on a fervent, faithful belief nothing bad could possibly happen to them in 5, 10, 50 years or so.

And have you ever talked to a structural engineer? "Yeaaaaah... that should stay up. Hang on, let me check my math. Yeaaaaah... I give that a safety factor of 2, but I doubt it's a 3. That's pretty good."



Heywood Mogroot wrote: So ... if they had just dug the hole and built a 4 story building on the resulting landfill ... they'd have had the equivalent civil engineering result? ? ?

I've wondered about that as well.

Part of it is, of course, the phallic, penis-centric thinking that occurs in the silted, cloudy minds of bureaucrats and businessmen. "Make it big! Make it tall! Make it shiny and exclusive! And make it a million bucks a square foot in rent!".

But that's not all of it. Even discounting the density and value of lower Manhatten's real estate.

You wouldn't be able to use all 22 acres for a flat, long building. Roads, walkways, access and other infrastructures would impinge. Elevators are quicker, easier and more attractive to employers than endless miles of hallways, or worse, bicycles and scooters indoors, or unrealistically, moving walkways.

Even in wide open areas office/tech buildings go multistory because it's just easier and more efficient than acres and acres of a single story building.
posted by loquacious at 12:29 AM on September 26, 2006

radio row looked like an awesome part of New York.

the competitiveness of the WTC towers was their inexpensive nature. they single-handedly glutted the market at the time.
posted by Busithoth at 12:53 AM on September 26, 2006

radio row looked like an awesome part of New York.

Much certain corners of Akihabara remain today. In the late 1960s I would guess these areas were rather more closely related.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:55 AM on September 26, 2006

jshcf

Never seen that footage and I've watched a lot of this stuff. It isn't in this montage for instance - he asks if he is missing any, I guess the answer is yes
posted by A189Nut at 2:32 AM on September 26, 2006

I kinda wish they would just re-build the WTC the way it was.
posted by delmoi at 2:48 AM on September 26, 2006

I kinda wish people would realize that 100 story buildings aren't the safest of ideas.
posted by furtive at 5:12 AM on September 26, 2006

If they'd used all that fill and built a 4-story building:

There would've been a big hole in the ground for the last 35 years, not 5.

The World Financial Center, Jewish Museum, etc. could not have been built.

The Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty or something would've been knocked down instead.

I'd rather see the towers back the way they were than anything else. It seems quite silly to demand the same square footage be built, with a building as tall or taller, and not just do them pretty much the way they were. Sure, no one wants to work there, but no one wants to work in the "Freedom Tower" either.
posted by rikschell at 5:47 AM on September 26, 2006

I kinda wish that any building or city structure or public gathering or mode of transportation for that matter would be safer from the threat of radical Islamic fundamentalists.
posted by allkindsoftime at 5:48 AM on September 26, 2006

I second the soundtrack comment. It reminds me of a John Adams fanfare (with some bonus distortion, of course).
posted by aliasless at 6:24 AM on September 26, 2006

It was more fun watching them go up.
posted by NinjaTadpole at 6:29 AM on September 26, 2006

Definitely a good video, helps visualize the retaining wall and other structures so often mentioned and long buried. How cool they built around the subway. I was surprised to learn the outer metal lattice was the main load-bearing - no wonder it came down like it did.
posted by stbalbach at 7:08 AM on September 26, 2006

Please make stop. I got so sick of hearing about that real estate FIVE YEARS AGO.

Why not rebuild the South Bronx instead? Don't buildings for people to LIVE in matter at all? Imagine all the four-storey apartment buildings that could be renovated with that. Let the freaking insurance companies put their offices there too, 5- or 10-storey buildings that in case of fire can be emptied on foot. Granted we won't get such nifty photos of people falling head-first for 27 floors, but that's the price we pay for Progress.
posted by davy at 7:32 AM on September 26, 2006

I kinda wish people would realize that 100 story buildings aren't the safest of ideas.

It's safe from everything other then, you know, direct attack. We're building buildings not fortresses.
posted by delmoi at 11:17 AM on September 26, 2006

Why not rebuild the South Bronx instead? Don't buildings for people to LIVE in matter at all? Imagine all the four-story apartment buildings that could be renovated with that.

Then everyone would complain about gentrification!
posted by delmoi at 11:19 AM on September 26, 2006

The title maker cleverly rebuilt the towers right above the date - ll.
posted by Cranberry at 12:44 PM on September 26, 2006

That was the intent.
posted by keswick at 1:33 PM on September 26, 2006

loquacious writes "And have you ever talked to a structural engineer? 'Yeaaaaah... that should stay up. Hang on, let me check my math. Yeaaaaah... I give that a safety factor of 2, but I doubt it's a 3. That's pretty good.'"

And yet modern skyscrapers rarely fall down. All engineering is like this, someone takes their best guess after taking into account all the factors they know about and can measure. Then the thing either fails or it doesn't. If it does fail (twin narrows) engineers try to figure out why and then avoid that mistake in the future. If it doesn't the next job is examined to see if we can make it cheaper, better, faster. The only reason things are as safe as they are now is because of centuries of engineering and experience. something to think about the next time someone starts pineing for the good old days.
posted by Mitheral at 1:42 PM on September 26, 2006