Its Official, Chicago’s Willis Tower is No 2

12 Nov, 2013

One World Trade Center has been officially crowned as the tallest building in the western hemisphere after a row that threatened to embarrass the building’s designers and see it demoted to second place, behind the Willis Tower in Chicago.

The debate centred over whether the 408ft steel structure on top of One World Trade Center was a spire or an antenna.

Supporters of the Willis Tower argued it was an antenna, and so the building was only 1,368ft, rather than its stated height of 1,776ft.

But the 30 members of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s “height committee”, who met on Friday, ruled that One World Trade Center reaches 1,776ft and its claim to be the tallest building in the western hemisphere is legitimate.

“We were very clear that it was a spire and not an antenna,” said Timothy Johnson, chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat at a press conference in New York City on Tuesday.

There had been speculation the council might change its criteria to allow antennas to be part of a building’s height, but this did not factor in the decision, Johnson said. “When we reviewed our height criteria we determined independently that out height criteria was fine. So there was nothing that needed to be changed regardless of One World Trade.”

Ever since One World Trade Center reached its full height, when its 408ft steel spire was installed on 10 May, there has been a growing lobby that argued that the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, was actually the taller.

In original design for One World Trade Center, the metal structure was to have been covered in decorative cladding, making it an integral part of the building’s design and thus a spire. But the cladding was ditched during construction due to issues over its upkeep, leading to the contention.

Without the structure One World Trade Center measures a mere 1,368ft, shorter than the 1,451ft Willis Tower.

The debate was particularly charged because of the symbolic nature of the metal structure on One World Trade Center. With the structure the building reaches 1,776ft – a reference to the year of the US Declaration of Independence.

Asked by the Guardian what would happen if the owners of the Willis Tower installed a taller permanent structure on top of their building, Johnson said: “Well we’d have to consider it. Of course.”

The Guardian

Mentioned In This Post: