[The WTC site to-be, with Chase's cantilever on the Tower 5 site overhanging Liberty Park at right]
Just a week after JPMorganChase confirmed plans to build the Tower of Darkness just south of the World Trade Center site—a tower featuring massively cantilevered trading floors hanging over the planned Liberty Park—Kohn Pedersen Fox architect Gene Kohn is beating a quick retreat from his firm's project renderings.
"We were given this assignment with the church planned just north of the tower. What do you do with trading floors of this size? We can't put them at grade, because the church is going to be there. So cantilevering is the only way to go. We weren't given any other option." With a ceiling formed by the underside of the trading floors, Kohn saw the chance for "a great outdoor room. You'll still see sky and daylight, like an atrium without walls on three sides" that will serve as a "a great porch facing the memorial."
Mr. Kohn, Curbed salutes you for the finest archibabble we've come across in quite some time. In related news, Kohn also says that "extensive studies" show the cantilever itself won't cast any additional shadows on the park, studies which might be interesting to release to the public domain, no?
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