A short history and description of the WTC towers from the website openbuildings.com is
linked here.
Some quotes:
"The structural engineering firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson worked to implement Yamasaki's design, developing the tube-frame structural system used in the twin towers. The Port Authority's Engineering Department served as foundation engineers, Joseph R. Loring & Associates as electrical engineers, and Jaros, Baum & Bolles as mechanical engineers. Tishman Realty & Construction Company was the general contractor on the World Trade Center project. Guy F. Tozzoli, director of the World Trade Department at the Port Authority, and Rino M. Monti, the Port Authority's Chief Engineer, oversaw the project. As an interstate agency, the Port Authority was not subject to local laws and regulations of the City of New York including building codes. Nonetheless, the structural engineers of the World Trade Center ended up following draft versions of the new 1968 building codes. The tube-frame design, earlier introduced by Fazlur Khan, was a new approach which allowed open floor plans rather than columns distributed throughout the interior to support building loads as had traditionally been done."
This new, innovative approach allowed more total square feet of usable office space than the traditional designs. In a further effort to maximize usable office space an innovative elevator layout was introduced:
"A major limiting factor in building height is the issue of elevators; the taller the building, the more elevators are needed to service the building, requiring more space-consuming elevator banks. Yamasaki and the engineers decided to use a new system with sky lobbies; floors where people could switch from a large-capacity express elevator which serves the sky lobbies, to a local elevator that goes to each floor in a section. This allowed the local elevators to be stacked within the same elevator shaft. Located on the 44th and 78th floors of each tower, the sky lobbies enabled the elevators to be used efficiently, increasing the amount of usable space on each floor from 62 to 75 percent by reducing the number of required elevator shafts. Altogether, the World Trade Center had 95 express and local elevators. This system was inspired by the New York City Subway system whose lines include local stations where local trains stop and express stations where all trains stop."
"The buildings were designed with narrow office windows 18 inches (46 cm) wide, which reflected Yamasaki's fear of heights as well as his desire to make building occupants feel secure. Yamasaki's design included building facades sheathed in aluminum-alloy. The World Trade Center was one of the most striking American implementations of the architectural ethic of Le Corbusier and it was the seminal expression of Yamasaki's gothic modernist tendencies."
Objections and Criticisms to the WTC Design
There were also objections to the design, that the designs were ugly and the building looked like 'big filing cabinets'. There was criticism they were unnecessarily gigantic. That they were 'purposeless giantism' or an example of 'technological exhibitionism':
"The World Trade Center design brought criticism of its aesthetics from the American Institute of Architects and other groups. Lewis Mumford, author of The City in History and other works on urban planning, criticized the project and described it and other new skyscrapers as "just glass-and-metal filing cabinets". The twin towers' narrow office windows, only 18 inches (46 cm) wide, were disliked by many for impairing the view from the buildings.
The trade center's "superblock", replacing a more traditional, dense neighborhood, was regarded by some critics as an inhospitable environment that disrupted the complicated traffic network typical of Manhattan. For example, in his book The Pentagon of Power, Lewis Mumford denounced the center as an "example of the purposeless giantism and technological exhibitionism that are now eviscerating the living tissue of every great city."
Actually, Lewis Mumford referred to them in his 1970 book Pentagon of Power as en excellent modern example of a 'homage to giantism'. This means that there is a decision to make them big just to show that it is possible, like showing off the most modern technology of the day just to show it off.
This is a direct quote from the book:
"The Port Authority, a quasi-governmental corporation, was in origin a happy political invention, first installed in London; but unfortunately its social functions subordinated to pecuniary motivations: and its executives have conceived it their duty to funnel more motor traffic into the city, through new bridges and tunnels, than its streets and parking lots can handle - while contributing to the lapse of a more adequate system of public transportation that included railroad, subway, and ferry. This policy has resulted in mounting traffic congestion, economic waste, and human deterioration - though with a constant rise in land values and speculative profits. These baneful results were anticipated and and graphically depicted by Clarence S. Stein, then Chairman of the New York State Housing and Regional Planning commision, in his article on 'Dinosaur Cities' in the 'Survey Graphic,' May 1925. Stein there described the breakdowns - already quite visible - resulting from housing congestion, water shortage, sewer pollution, street clogging, traffic jams, and municipal bankruptcy. But Dinosaurs were handicapped by insufficient brains, and the World Trade Center is only another Dinosaur."
Ouch!
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So the history of the WTC towers is a complex one even before construction began. The tube design was an effort to maximize usable office space. This design was considered new and innovative.
In short,
it was an experiment.
And not everyone agreed with the design or the mere size of this gigantic pair of structures.
With the gift of hindsight and accurate, detailed collapse mappings there is another chapter to be added to the complete history of these innovative and gigantic experimental towers. The decision to maximize usable office space is what ultimately led to unique and distinctive mode by which they collapsed. The buildings were an experiment and the results of that experiment can now be analyzed in an open and critical way.
Or at least they should. Were these buildings actually dinosaurs as Lewis Mumford observed in 1970? Was the large. stacked open office system a failed experiment?
