Twin Towers: The Rise, and the Rise Again of Great Architecture
Once criticized for its different modernist style, the World Trade Center has become known most for the horrific assault of 9/11, but is deserves recognition for its fine engineering and architecture. In 1962, the Port Authority thought they should take a different route on choosing an architect for the building of the World Trade Center.
Instead of choosing a big time architect, they would choose one with a more mainstream background. The twin towers were built in New York, New York, USA by architect, Minoru
Yamasaki and Associates. The One World Trade Center was completed in 1972 at 1,368 feet high, and the Two World Trade Center was completed a year later in 1973 at 1,362 feet high, both with 110 stories. At the time of the completion of the two buildings, the
Twin towers were known as the tallest buildings in the world.
Yamasaki worked as a disciple of Mies van der Rohe favoring such minimalist lines as seen the Martin Luther King Memorial Library in Washington, D.C. and the IBM
Building in Chicago. Yamasaki soon tired of the International Style, and moved on to something new: New Formalism. Yamasaki was one of the most prominent architects of the 20th century. He and fellow architect Edward Durell Stone are generally considered to be the two master practitioners of New Formalism. This was not a style that caught on and it was not a style that followed the International Style. But Yamasaki was inspired by a style that was more decorative and ornamental, after his trip to Europe and Japan in
1954. This was difficult for him, because Americans were so stuck on the International
Style: the “all-glass” buildings. 1
Angus Kress Gillespie, Twin Towers: The Life of New York’s World Trade Center
(New Jersey and London: Rutgers University
