Airport/Transit Award of Merit: World Trade Center Transportation Hub
PHOTO COURTESY OF STV
World Trade Center Transportation Hub
New York City
Award of Merit
Owner Port Authority of New York & New Jersey
Design Architect and Structural Engineer Santiago Calatrava S.A.
Architect and Engineer of Record Downtown Design Partnership, an STV/AECOM Joint Venture
General Contractor Tishman Construction/Turner Construction Co. Joint Venture
Structural Design Parsons Transportation Group
Structural/Security Weidlinger Associates (Now Merged With Thornton Tomasetti)
The World Trade Center Transportation Hub is part of a 16-acre redevelopment of lower Manhattan after the destruction of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack..
Housing 11 subway lines in addition to the PATH train, the transportation hub is visited by more than 250,000 commuters every day and provides internal pathways to the site’s office tower and features nearly 400,000 sq ft of retail space.
The hub’s main transit hall, known as The Oculus, is designed to evoke a dove taking flight. The wing-shaped shell consists of hundreds of tons of steel and glass, allowing daylight to flood the interior.
Constructing the 11,500-ton, 588-piece Oculus was especially complicated. To guarantee the building’s structural integrity, placement of the steel needed to meet tight tolerances. Two of the largest-capacity tower cranes ever used in New York City were deployed to lift steel members as heavy as 80 tons roughly 185 ft in the air.
Daily safety walk-throughs and weekly inspections by the New York City Fire Dept. ensured the safety of the project’s workers. The team also continuously coordinated its efforts with all other projects being designed and built at the site during the same time frame and accommodated the needs and requirements of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, office towers, vehicle security center and other existing structures.
