One World Trade Center officially opens today, marking a major milestone in the history of New York City. More than 13 years in the making, the 104-story, 1776-ft office tower - the tallest in the Western Hemisphere - recaptures the New York skyline, reasserts downtown Manhattan's preeminence as a global business center, and establishes a new civic icon for the country.
A ceremony to mark the occasion will be held later this month.
The landmark skyscraper was this year’s Presidential Award winner in AISC’s IDEAS2 Awards, in recognition of its particular accomplishments in structural engineering. AISC presented the project team with the awards on the 46th floor of the tower in September just before SteelDay.
“This is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and an engineering feat that both warms the heart and pleases the eye,” commented IDEAS2 Awards judge Erin Criste, staff engineer in AISC’s education department.
The tower structure is comprised of a hybrid system combining a robust concrete core with a perimeter ductile steel moment frame. The reinforced concrete core wall system at the center of the tower acts as the main spine of the tower, providing support for gravitational loads as well as resistance to wind and seismic forces; it houses mechanical rooms and all means of egress.
A ductile perimeter moment frame system is introduced for redundancy and to further enhance the overall building performance under lateral load wind and seismic loads. The perimeter moment frame wraps around all vertical and sloped perimeters, forming a tube system.
For a detailed description and photos of the 1WTC project, see this year’s IDEAS2 Awards coverage in the May 2014 issue of MSC.