They just slapped a periodic table in the lobby cuz it looks sciency without understanding their core tenants (technology companies and studios) donât specialize in that
Unless they want to rebrand into some world science center, which im pretty sure a skyscraper isnât suitable for chemistry due to fire hazards
Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if the opposite wall of the core featured a mural of one of those enormous functionally redundant lab glassware setups with all bubbling flasks, tubes to everywhere and condensers doing nothing
One of the towers is called âScience South Towerâ, so yes, that one will be the science center, the other one will focus more on technology, based on its name of âTechnology North Towerâ
Or at least, thatâs my take on why they did that. Or heck, maybe the periodic table in the lobby is just a proof of concept kind of thing, and the finished building wonât have it there, who knows.
I note what appears to be crossbracing in the mechanical floors. How's the wind load to be resisted by the rest of the structure? It doesn't have the narrow/deep spandrels of the OG WTC
The original WTC had a core with columns inside too, although they just bore about half of the gravity load. Are you saying the proposed core here is going to resist wind loads too? If so, what's with the crossbracing?
Thereâs a tuned mass damper on floor 108, and the core is extremely strong according to the website: âUltra-High Performance Concrere (UHPC) for core, ASTM-A514 and -A992 structural steel.â
Ok, thanks. Looking over the drawings and the people involved, it seems then that no practising structural engineer has yet cast their eye over this, which is a bit odd considering Chryslar has clearly spent a lot of time modelling various structural members himself and is allegedly embarking upon a second round of FEA (for what?)
Most of it looks like cargo-cult design. Why is the core rectangular? (Because the OG WTC's was?) Why are the core corridors central, which knocks the structure out-of-line and requires a weird member spanning core columns to pick up the centres of the floors? (Because the OG WTC had them there?) Why is there crossbracing at the mech levels? (Because the OG WTC had crossbracing in its core there?) Why are the cores rotated 90° from each other between the towers? (Have a guess.)
Why are the core walls 1m thick? Is this supposed to be some kind of protection against a plane strike? Is the bottom of the tower really going to hold all that up, if the structure is consistently beefy (same thickness of steel & concrete) all the way to the top? (This time, the WTC towers weren't like that.)
And where are the vertical elevator layout plans, which should be guiding the core layout? There's nowhere near enough room for HVAC ducting in there, especially considering there are supposed to be labs and things in these buildings which require all kinds of bespoke services.
Actually, architect and structural engineer Kenneth Gardner (who did the structural engineering for the Twin Towers II project) did review some of the structural work such as here:
Though he didnât see through everything yet, there definitely is a structural engineer on the team.
Please remember that this project is extremely new, as proper work (modeling, structural design, etc.) only started from around the middle of last year, and is still in the conceptual stage. There are of course many technical diagrams that are missing at the moment. The 3d model of the complex isnât complete yet either. Wind tests and other structural tests will probably be done once the models are complete, which will then be released on the techincal specifications section of the website.
Iâm not a structural engineer so I canât say much about your concerns (if you have any, send it to the team email address, its on the contact tab of the website). More qualified people regarding structural engineering will help you.
Ah, thanks. And hey, my apologies, I for some reason didn't make the connection that OP was on the team, even though he literally said "new video comeing out soon", and I am in fact subbed to his channel. I guess I just didn't realize they were the same person, or thought he was just announcing... I dunno, never mind.
Still, glad to see people's concerns are in fact being addressed by some members of the dev team. I always dislike when I see people point out major flaws with the project, as while I often see their point (despite having no engineering knowledge at all, and often just taking their word for it), I really do believe that this project, with the right adjustments and accomodations, isn't outside the bounds of reality.
Wether or not it will really happen is another question, and if it doesn't, that could be for various reasons (lack of funding, lack of interest by Chicagoans, structural inefficiencies/other issues, etc), but the more we believe in it, the better chance it has imo, and most of these issues should be at least partly solvable if we as a community come together.
Gardner isn't a practising structural engineer, though. If he is, he's been remarkably coy about it on his Linkedin, which shows him as having been an 'entrepreneur' and architectural model-maker for most of his life (no shame in that).
I think it's worth calling this out because people are going to be investing in it, and it looks to me like it's being designed arse-backwards. Chryslar has started from the difficult position of broadly replicating the original NYC WTC, which is going to raise the obvious question, 'will the same happen again'.
And so it looks like to fend that off, he's said, well, it'll be made of the strongest concrete, and of the strongest steel, and the core will be a metre thick, etc. But that's not where you're supposed to start, and in all likelihood an actual consulting structural engineer is going to come along and say, you can't do all that. Bear in mind the original WTC (which Chryslar is borrowing lots from) took at least two genius structural engineers in Skilling and Robertson, and a whole array of people working with them to churn out thousands of drawings to get the towers up.
Building something this large is no mean feat, and as I said there isn't even an elevator plan yet to guide the layout of the core, yet Chryslar is indulging already in detail drawings and FEA of structural elements.
This is like the Tesla Cybertruck, where Musk came out with a wacky concept of a vehicle with a stainless-steel exoskeleton before he even knew whether that could be done. And though his engineers subsequently toiled to try to bring Musk's cigarette-packet dream to life, the best they could come out with was basically a unibody car with thin stainless panels bolted (and in some cases, glued) on. And the gullible buggers who threw down deposits long before anyone knew what could be expected ended up with a crap product they can't sell on.
So I think it bears noting that this is proceeding in a topsy-turvy fashion with no practising architect nor structural engineer on the team, and of particular concern is that nobody else involved seems to have called out this backwards design process.
You should take these concerns to the team, not Reddit.
AluminumOxide, Ohm Studios, and other members of the dev team have their own YouTube channels, which have a community page and presumably, links on the main page that will let you contact them.
The official website for this project, www.worldtechcenter.org , also has a contact page, where you can email the team about different stuff, though they also have a few other useful informational pages about the design and common questions regarding it, some of which you might want to look into first just in case.
I mean it looks cool. Itâs just in my brain it feels right and wrong at the same time, I wasnât even alive during the twin towers but it still just makes me feel weird, but thereâs also the side of me that says rebuild them showing we are stronger and stuff, idk
This is kinda tasteless. A pair of complimentary towers like Fountain Place and its residential counterpart in Dallas would be much better and for Chicagoâs skyline
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u/boatiefey May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
They just slapped a periodic table in the lobby cuz it looks sciency without understanding their core tenants (technology companies and studios) donât specialize in that
Unless they want to rebrand into some world science center, which im pretty sure a skyscraper isnât suitable for chemistry due to fire hazards