It's Official: WTC Oculus Will Open the First Week in March
[Santiago Calatrava's Oculus lit up at night. Photo by Craig Nevill-Manning]
Sure, the news was all but confirmed, but today the Port Authority made it official: The transit org announced that the World Trade Center Transportation Hub—anchored by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava's Oculus—will officially open in "the first week of March,"per a press release.
WTC Transportation Hub Oculus To Open In March
[Via WTC Progress]
After over 10 years and about $4 billion, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub's Santiago Calatrava-designed Oculus is set to open in early March, Politico New York reported. The structure has been plagued by cost overruns, the price having just about doubled. The official World Trade Center website says it will deliver "unmatched mass transit," connecting 11 subway lines (A, C, E, J, Z, R, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), the PATH system, several MTA bus routes, ferry service, and parking garages.
World Trade Center Transportation Hub Plagued By Leaky Roof
A leaky roof will delay the opening of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub's underground mall from 2015 to the first half of 2016. The Times reports that water is seeping into the structure around the construction site of 3 World Trade Center. Officials have identified the source as water sprayed by workers to reduce the dust level as they break up concrete at the site of construction. The leak is affecting four retail spaces in the Westfield World Trade Center Mall, which has signed on big-name tenants like Apple, Kate Spade, and Eataly.
Santiago Calatrava: 'I Deeply Consider Architecture an Art'
[Santiago Calatrava's Oculus lit up at night. Photo by Craig Nevill-Manning]
ArchDaily recently sat down for a chat with Santiago Calatrava, the architect behind the World Trade Center Transportation Hub (and its controversial Oculus) for a chat about his career, his work, and the challenges of running his own architecture firm. The interview, which took place at the architect's home in New York City, provided some choice quotes:
"I deeply consider architecture as an art—the most abstract of all of them.…It's probably the most difficult to reach in terms of preparations to deliver something coherent."
"I like working for public companies. It's public, it means it belongs to everyone, and I like that."
Check out more in the video below.
Skylight of World Trade Center Oculus Will Open Each Sept. 11
Santiago Calatrava's $4 billion World Trade Center Transportation Hubmay be drastically over-budget and years late, but the project is a "glorious boondoggle" that keeps on giving. In 2008, Calatrava's plan to create a movable structure that would—to keep up with the Bird In Flight descriptor of the central Oculus—unfurl its wings got the axe amidst budget concerns. But the New York Times says that the Oculus will indeed open itself to the elements. While not to the same degree that Calatrava once envisioned, the Oculus will be topped by a 355-foot-long operable skylight that will range from 12 feet wide at its most slender ends to 22 feet wide in its center.
New Looks Inside Calatrava's $4B World Trade Center Oculus
[New WTC PATH station mezzanine level. AP Photo/Mary Altaffer.]
The entirety of the World Trade Center Oculus is less than a year awayfrom completion, but over the last month, new pieces of architect Santiago Calatrava's "bird in flight" have opened, giving the public a fresh look at the gleaming transportation hub. The Daily News has photos from a construction tour this week that shows the latest updates and the recently opened Platform B. The platform's mezzanine level, shown above, is kind of amazing and shows off the station's soaring ribbed structure. This $4 billion structure may be wildly over budget and super delayed, but at least it's going to be pretty mind-blowing when it's finished.
Calatrava 'Treated Like a Dog' Over World Trade Boondoggle
Santiago Calatrava isn't only the architect behind the scandal-plagued ascent of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub; he's a person too, you know, and he wants to remind people that he has feelings. "It has not been easy for me," Calatrava told the Wall Street Journalregarding all of the criticism he's fielded amidst the hub's major delays and massively inflated—doubled—budget, "I have been treated like a dog." The reasons for the delays, the Journal points out, are numerous, and owe in part to the interweaving of multiple projectsspearheaded by a handful of agencies around the site, including the state's demand to keep the subway that runs atop the underground hub running as construction commenced four stories below.
Calatrava's World Trade Center Hub to Open Next Month
While the end is not in sight for construction at the World Trade Center site, a significant portion of the redevelopment is set to open to the public after years of delays and setbacks. Most notably, Santiago Calatrava's Oculus hub (well, a small part of it) is going to open in June, the Times reports. The hub has been decried by architecture critics as a "kitsch stegosaurus" and "a magnificent boondoggle" (in fact, no on can resist taking a swipe—David Dunlap, in this most recent article, describes it as looking "like a turkey skeleton after it's been stripped clean at Thanksgiving") but soon the public will be able to judge for itself, from the inside. A north-south passageway that connects the PATH platforms to new entrances at Vesey and Liberty Streets is set to open next month.
Calatrava's World Trade Center Hub Is a 'Glorious Boondoggle'
Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center Transportation Hub has been referred to as many things, amongst them a "self-indulgent monstrosity," a "kitsch stegosaurus," and "LOL-ugly." It has also been endlessly derided for doubling its budget, making it the most expensive train station in history. Now, for NY Mag, Andrew Rice adds his two cents to the ongoing debate of the hub's architectural merit, the role of Calatrava's ego in its completion, and the calamitous process behind its rise, acknowledging that the project is indeed a "boondoggle" but a glorious one at that. In no less than 5,000 words, Rice expresses what he sums up so succinctly in one straightforward sentence, "Of course, you can simultaneously admire the design's ambition and wonder whether it was worthwhile." Now, the most informative, telling, and humorous lines from Rice's epic retrospective.
The long-awaited World Trade Center transportation hub, designed by Santiago Calatrava to look like a bird in flight, is set to open this year. Right on the heels of a first glimpse inside the stegosaurus-like construction site, the Observer dares to ask: "Why Is Calatrava's $4 Billion World Trade Center PATH Station Covered in Rust?" Never fear, New Yorkers, because the final product will be as snow-white as the renderings: "Once all of the welding is done, the steel will be blasted, cleaned and the appropriate corrosion protection system and paint will be applied." Well, whew, because after $4B the thing shouldn't look dirty. [NYO; previously]Inside the Still Unfinished $4 Billion WTC Transportation Hub
Photos by Aymann Ismail/ANIMAL
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The flurry of retrospective analysis after Santiago Calatrava's proverbial camel of a World Trade Center Transportation Hub topped out back in November may have seemed to indicate that the project was near completion. But, as evidenced by some photos taken by one brave ANIMAL NewYork reporter who found his way past the steel bird wing thingies, the vastly over-budget hub is still far from finished. According to the Port Authority (which is greeeeat at following through with deadlines), the hub should open by late 2015.
Glory Be, 3 World Trade Center Finally Started Rising Again
Ever since embattled 3 World Trade Center got its groove funding backin order, we've been waiting for action at the construction site. And there it goes! A panopoly of shots from construction chronicler website FIeld Condition shows work proceeding above the formerly stalled seventh story. It will eventually reach 80 stories, but slow and steady wins the race, right? Developer Larry Silverstein expects the glassy office tower to open in 2018.
James Gardner of the Real Deal recently sat down with architect Santiago Calatrava, who offered some insights about the semi-controversial and super expensive World Trade Center transit hub. "I think it turned out well, especially the part that was made of steel. That steel section is unique in the world. It is completely new. At the same time, it invokes some very iconic New York structures, like the suspension bridges across the Hudson and the East River." [TRD; previously; photo by Will Femia]Why the World Trade Center Transit Hub Cost $4 Billion
[Image via WTC Progress]
The World Trade Center Transportation Hub gets a lot of flack for its bloated $4 billion price tag, and for good reason. The hub is a reported eight years behind schedule and costing $2 billion over initial estimates. What oculus architect Santiago Calatrava has to show for his efforts is an abstract structural porcupine (sorry, "bird in flight") that is celebrated by a few but more notably bemoaned by many. Now, the Times has taken to exposing just where that extra $2 billion came into play in the project. Warning: mind-boggling complications ahead.
1) $655 Million+: Administrative costs, which the Times runs down as "construction management, supervision, inspection, monitoring and documentation, among other items."
World Trade Center Hub Tops Out with Final Rafter Installation
West view of WTC site, November 4, via Facebook/WTC Progress
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Last we checked in on the progress of Santiago Calatrava's long-overdue, vastly overbudget World Trade Center Transportation Hub, workers were just beginning to install the 114 rafters that would turn the ambitious structure into a "flying bird." According to the developers at the time, the rafter installation was expected to be finished by August. Now it's November, and the final rafter has just been put in place, which, in the grand scheme of World Trade Center construction estimates, is pretty good. With this milestone finally reached, the hub is (supposedly) on pace for a late 2015 grand opening.
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