Floating Island is a programmed landscape flowing on the WTC site, which joins the surrounding buildings in the air in a horizontal way. The new WTC is no longer a working machine. Instead, it becomes a construction of organism. With rigorous analysis of the international trade model, we concluded that successful business conducts of modern time is no longer reliant on the scale of working space.
Therefore, our strategy is to hold the business infrastructure in a limited space, where digital technology plays the leading role in the running of the business. This strategy is embodied in and interpreted by multi-media center for business, digital working station, air transportation center, international meeting rooms and convention center. Also, it provides facilities that relate to other aspects of urban life, like theaters, digital cinemas, recreation centers, hotels and restaurants, working gardens, parks, trees, and even a man-made lake.
Unlike the traditional vertical skyscrapers that isolate themselves from the city, our idea is facilitate more horizontal flow through downtown Manhattan and encourage human movement and activity. The ground level is therefore not only open to business people, but also to a more diversified public, which connects the waterfront and the heart of the financial district. With its new organizational structure, this proposal articulates our queries of ‘machine aesthetics’ and ‘vertical city’, characteristics of a now outdated modernism.
Our ambition is to go beyond the discussion of visual symbolism. We believe the best memorial to WTC is development.
