Fumihiko Maki, Installation view at Palazzo Mora, 2016.

In June of 2003, one year and ninth months following the tragedies of 9-11, Maki and Associates solicited interest by developer Silverstein Properties to join a team of architects in the reconstruction efforts at Ground Zero – The World Trade Center. An initial site visit of the massive destruction, including a project briefing surrounding its master plan, materialized in September of the same year with no specific assignment. A period of three years had lapsed while the developer was finalizing the complexities of the Commercial Design Guidelines outlining the key principles and requirements of the redevelopment with the land owner, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey that also included other stakeholders such as the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the 9-11 Memorial Foundation, and the City of New York.
Only in March of 2006 was Maki and Associates formally appointed as the architects for 4 World Trade Center alongside Foster & Partners (2 WTC) and Rogers Stirk Harbour (3 WTC) while the design for 1 World Trade Center by SOM was well progressed. The undertaking of the commission of a large scale skyscraper overseas entailed a most serious commitment for Maki and Associates and of its ability to secure a high quality of work that has been the pride and character of its practice delivered by an architecture atelier. Over the first two years, monthly design presentations to Larry Silverstein and Silverstein Properties ensued in New York. A task force office was established on the 10th Floor of 7 World Trade Center adjacent the site with full time representation from all architects and engineers to enable close and timely coordination throughout all design and construction phases. The process to achieve this building has been a 24-hour daily operation over the course of the past seven years.
4 World Trade Center belongs to a collective group of buildings founded on the redevelopment master plan by Studio Daniel Libeskind known as “Memory Foundations”. It is the first completed building on the original 16-acre World Trade Center site and is the fourth of five skyscrapers intended to form a spiral composition of stepping buildings encircling the National September 11 Memorial Park. Provided a corner site, the project occupies a full city block bounded by Greenwich, Church, Cortland and Liberty Streets and is adjacent two parks in a rare privileged setting within Manhattan. The building is prominently staged onto Memorial Park on the west and faces Zuccotti Park on the southeast corner, becoming a portal to Wall Street and Lower Manhattan.
The 72-storey building reaches a height of 977 feet (298 meters) and contains 2.3 million square feet (213,700 square meters) of office and retail space. The offices comprise 56-floors in two distinctly configured floor plates in three vertical sections. The larger of the two in the low and mid-rise sections is 44,000 square feet in the shape of a parallelogram echoing the configuration of the site. The high-rise section is 32,000 square feet in the shape of a trapezoid that gives the building a triangulated sculptural effect that is chiselled at the top. The form achieves a sense of a rotational pivot at the corner to contribute to its role in the formal composition of the master plan.
The tower is designed to create a strong sculptural effect with a quiet presence. Seen from a distance, it can be identified as a minimalistic sculpture with its angular profile that distinguishes itself in the skyline. The building is clad in colorless silver glass that dynamically changes appearance depending upon the time of day, weather, and light. It transforms itself from a distinct sculptural object to one that blends and becomes a part of the sky with a glazed and metallic materiality. Each of the 11,000 structurally glazed curtain wall units are detailed with a single lite of insulated glass that is 5 feet wide by 13 feet 6 inches high concealing the spandrel section at the floor / ceiling cavity via a horizontal touch mullion to enable the tower to express a highly abstract quality.
The building reveals itself as a piece of architecture through space, tactile materials, their colors, and refined details upon closer approach. Upon arriving at the base of the tower, one is unable to discern the large building as a complete entity. Unlike pure sculpture, the building clearly establishes a sense of place that is not only visual but one that is felt through rich spatial experiences.