World Trade Center Architecture

Ground Floor Photo ^ | John Jamieson

[John Jamieson]

I don't believe I've ever seen a discussion of the architecture of the World Trade Center. From a distance, the WTC looks like two simple towers, but up close, at street level, I think it looked kind of Islamic. I was struct by how much even the ruins of the facade looked like scenes of recent architecural elements shown on TV, in Pakistan. bin Laden hates us for many reasons, but did he have extra hate for this building? See link for photo.

[John Jamieson]

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[John Jamieson]

Will the replacement buildings be of similar detail?

[solon_where_r_u]

The pointed arch is a Gothic, and therefore Western, motif. I'm an architect by the way.

[John Jamieson]

You don't see any Islamic influence at all?

[gopgen]

It's slightly ominous...the WTC did in fact have a somewhat Islamic facade. I don't think that inspired the terrorists, however. If you want to break out the tinfoil for this post, that would be acceptable...but Mike Luckovich did a cartoon after the tragedy (which appeared in Newsweek) which showed the planes hitting a tall "Holy Quran," not the WTC. I don't think it would be inappropriate to say that the terrorists more or less set Islam back many years, and may actually have ended it (in its current form) as a "true religion/philosophy."

[shadeaud]

On Wednesday evening the A & E channel will have a special on the twin towers. I assume it will show from it's conception to it completion. It should be interesting

[John Jamieson]

I won't miss it. I was last there in about '95 and I thought it was great.

[MHT]

I read an article about the WTC architect (I think it was in the WSJ last week) and he lamented the many "classic failures". Now, in seeing those many steel columns reinforcing the exterior, I am more amazed than ever that it would collapse--and so quickly, at that.

Didn't any structural engineers ever foresee the possible problems and risks that these structures presented?

[Nick Danger]

Didn't any structural engineers ever foresee the possible problems and risks that these structures presented?

What risk was that? These buildings took a direct hit from airliners weighing 450,000 pounds, going 500 miles per hour. At impact, this exerted a force of 632 million ft-lbs at the 70th floor. Neither building snapped at the bottom or even swayed.

What brought the buildings down was fire, primarily caused by the jet fuel. The melting point of steel is about 1600 degrees C. The flame temperature of kerosene (jet fuel) is 1700 degrees C. No steel structure of any kind could have withstood a fire fueled by 24,000 gallons of jet fuel. That they stood as long as they did, giving time for thousands of people to escape, tells us that these buildings were strong indeed. When they failed, they failed exactly the way they were supposed to... straight down. Can you imagine the death toll if buildings that size had fallen over sideways, crashing into other buildings on the way down?

The architect and the structural engineers deserve a round of applause, not approbation.

[Nick Danger]

Oops. approbation = disapprobation.

[2Fro]

Here is the address of a site with an interesting engineering discussion of the WTC, its design, construction and its fall. Go to http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.htm.

[nolu chan]

It would seem the terrorist planners at least had a belief they might bring the buildings down.

[Alberta's Child]

I don't think there's anything Islamic about the design. If you look at the top of the photo, you'll see that the structural columns are very close together (I think they were only 33 inches apart). The buildings could not be designed with those columns all the way up, since the space would not accommodate doors or anything of that sort at ground level. As a result, at the bottom of the buildings they had to tie these columns in "bundles" of three on top of larger columns spaced further apart.

[Romulus]

Eastern architecture is full of pointed arches. It's worth noting that the pointed arch doesn't appear in Western architecture till around 1130, not long after the first Crusade.

[supercat]

Now, in seeing those many steel columns reinforcing the exterior, I am more amazed than ever that it would collapse--and so quickly, at that.

Didn't any structural engineers ever foresee the possible problems and risks that these structures presented?

Had the planes crashed into buildings of more 'conventional' construction, large parts of the buildings would have collapsed within seconds. The remainder would have collapsed within minutes.

Although buildings in this country are constructed with reasonable engineering margins, in many structures the loss of even one structural element can cause severe damage. One big reason for this is that the strength of a beam required to bridge a span is proportional to the square of the span's length. If the span doubles in length, the beam must be four times as strong. If you have a row of pillars at 20' spacing, loss of even a single pillar will mean that two 20' spans have been replaced by a 40' span. Unless the beams had a four-fold engineering margin, they will not hold.

Actually, the situation is even worse than that, since the failure of the bottom of a pillar will mean that the remainder of the column, which the beams used not to support at all, will now be supported in the center of the beams, which is their worst-case spot. Not good at all.

As though that weren't bad enough, many buildings use either reinforced-concrete or steel-truss structures which are designed only to be supported by columns, and not to support them. If a column fails, these structures will have almost zero strength to support their own weight, much less that of anything above them.

Really, that the WTC was able to survive the impacts structurally was quite remarkable. While they were not able to withstand 20,000lb of jet fuel, I doubt that any 300+-foot-tall structure built in the last 1000 years could do any better.

[ItCanHappenToYou]

The interior of the mosque at Cordoba ( 8th century) is a continuous arcade - all round arches. The Alhambra ( 12th C) has tons of pointy arches in the tracery and lacework. The arch was actually discovered by the Etruscans and put to work by the Romans (Coliseum). It was lost, along with the recipe for concrete, during the dark ages. It was rediscovered in principle with the bays of late Romanesque and put to work in French and northern Gothic.

The arch is a Western invention, but the Islamic nations also used it. Islamic art relies heavily on patterns from nature- the natural arches of trees are one such example. Hope this helps.