The first rib-like forms of Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center Transportation Center are rising from the giant pit at the base of Ground Zero in Manhattan. What is expected to cost more than $3 billion and will not be completed for another four years, is a graceful building that will be the transportation hub for the train station below the World Trade Center.
Most of the ultimate construction being done, is below ground. That’s where tracks intersect, where miles of walkways for pedestrians cross-cross the structure, where facilities for repair and supply of the trains will be located and where hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail space will be packed with those scurrying between home and work.
Until the end of this month (August 2009) a special exhibition about the construction of this massive station is being presented at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute. Until the recent construction efforts seen above ground, this exhibition has been one of the only places that New Yorkers and visitors could glimpse the coming future.
The famous Spanish architect made his mark desiging these large complex and futuristic industrial edifices and imaginative bridges. In a recent interview with Bloomberg News, Calatrava claimed that this building us the most complex he has ever designed.
“I have designed stations in Zurich, Lisbon, and Lyons,” Calatrava said. “And this is the most complex I have done.”
That admission surprised me, because Calatrava has designed flowing structures that appear far more complex. They spin steel and concrete into astonishingly delicate fretworks of vaults, arches, braces, cables and ribs. They intersect and overlap like the skeletons of gigantic birds.
He said the station was sized for growth. Also, the long, clear sightlines of the large oculus and the shallow undulating vaults above the tracks are essential, Calatrava argued.
“The goal of any transportation project is to find your way through the logic of the design and to have as little signage as possible. You are more comfortable when you can sense which movement is the right one. The oculus stretches from the Trade Center station on the No. 1 subway line east to the R and W station. It could not be more clear.”
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
