Whitaker, with the help of students and the staff at Craig Whitaker Architects, undertook a months-long study of the planning issues that face potential World Trade Center designers before anything else can be done.
Building America is, in a way, the Building Museum’s permanent collection, on the web. It’s an effort—a laudable and substantially accomplished effort—to put the history of American construction out in cyberspace, where the general public can get a better idea of its environment.
As work on the Freedom Tower’s foundations progresses, with an eye to vertical construction beginning next year, observers are expressing doubts over the project’s total price tag, which seems poised to rise at a faster rate than the building itself. Earlier this year, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officially authorized construction of the Skidmore Owings & Merrill-designed building, which forms the symbolic cornerstone of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex. The agency also approved the awarding of contracts worth nearly $500 million for continuing construction on the Freedom Tower’s foundations, which began last spring. A press
