ConstructMyFuture.com | Students - Cool Stuff -- Top Ten Construction Projects: World Trade Center

World Trade Center
New York, New York, United States of America
Destroyed on 9-11-2001 by terrorist attack

As business becomes more international, the ideals behind the construction of the World Trade Center are proven correct. The World Trade Center's twin 1,350 foot towers were the tallest in the world at the time they were dedicated on April 4, 1973. Built with the goal of being home to private firms and government agencies engaged in World Trade, the 16 acre site consisted of seven buildings housing more than 350 tenant companies representing 25 different nations. Some 40,000 people worked at the complex on any given day.

In addition to establishing a home for international businesses, the project was also designed to stimulate the economy in downtown Manhattan.

The architectural team, Minoru Yamasaki, and Associates of Troy, Michigan, and Emery Roth and Sons of New York, produced a series of recommendations, and the Port Authority finally settled on the current twin tower design. Because the goal of the Port Authority was to create 10 million square feet of rental office space, the design was pushed to its staggering heights. Excavation of more than 1.2 million cubic yards of earth and rock, the use of more than 200,000 tons of steel and 425,000 cubic yards of concrete, a system capable of producing a cooling capacity of 60,000 tons, making it the largest in the world.

The twin towers were both 110 stories tall, and when combined with the other five buildings on the site, totaled more than 10 million square feet. The towers yielded 75 percent, column-free actual rental space, significantly higher than the 52 percent typical of high-rise buildings.

Because the plaza level of the center was only three feet above sea level, construction of the foundation of the World Trade Center was almost as sizable an undertaking as the towers themselves. A three-foot slot was cut through solid rock beneath the plaza. In places, the slot was more than 70 feet deep, and had a slurry poured into it to keep earth and groundwater out of the World Trade Center's foundation.

Above ground, prefabricated portions of the buildings came from as far away as Seattle, St. Louis and Los Angeles. Australia exported eight cranes designed specifically for the construction of the World Trade Center. Dubbed 'Kangaroo' cranes, they sat atop the building and rose with the height of the building.

Inside the towers, there were state of the art heating, cooling telecommunications, fire control and elevator systems. The buildings were serviced by a total of 239 elevators and 71 escalators. The elevators were capable of carrying 55 persons - a 10,000 pound capacity. Express elevators traveled at speeds of up to 26 feet per second.

As if all the office space wasn't enough, The World Trade Center was home to Manhattan's largest indoor shopping mall, with more than 70 specialty stores, and a wide range of quick- and full-service food shops. There were also a wide variety of spaces and facilities for meetings, trade shows, art exhibits, seminars and other group functions.