The framed-tube structure of the original Twin Towers was pretty novel at the time. It allowed the building to have wide open floor plans without the need to have a grid of support beams everywhere like most other skyscrapers up until then. It also likely would not have collapsed if built the traditional way. Then again most modern skyscrapers are built more like the original WTC and less like the Empire State Building, so it's not really a design flaw.
The visual design of the towers was also striking in it's minimalism, and quite controversial too. I think people got used to them but after they were first opened many saw them as a blight on the skyline. IMO, I prefer the old towers to the new, not that the new one is particularly ugly or anything. They were kinda like the Pyramids of skyscrapers; just build a shape, as big and tall as you can. Maybe if 9/11 never happened a future civilization would have called them "The Rectangles".
The 208' square floorplan resulted in a slender monolith. With other construction methods, they may have toppled, rather than collapsed within the tube. That may have resulted in even more death and destruction.
The development of the World Trade Center destroyed "Radio Row". Possibly more of the electronics industry would have stayed in the New York area had than not happened. "The Death of New York's Radio Row" https://www.qcwa.org/radio-row.htm
> The 208' square floorplan resulted in a slender monolith. With other construction methods, they may have toppled, rather than collapsed within the tube. That may have resulted in even more death and destruction.
I guess we'll never know, so I'm just theory crafting, but the structure above impact on the South Tower did topple to a pretty extreme angle before falling straight down:
I suppose for a concrete grid structure like Empire State Building, it might have slid off and fell to the ground without collapsing the structure below. Not really sure if that would be any worse, or better.
The only way to get it to topple like you'd expect a tree would when chopped down is for the airplane impact to be much lower on the structure. That would not have been possible of course because of all the other buildings in the way, but it was I believe the intention of the 1993 WTC bombing.
Interesting photo, thanks. I was thinking that the top would buckle at the point of impact and fall sideways.
Compared with the B-25 collision with the Empire State Building, the B-767s are over 10 times heavier, were moving more than twice as fast, and the WTC has half the cross section of the Empire State. Plus, the fuel load of the 767s is comparably greater and causes a greater fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Empire_State_Building_B-2...
There was nothing nice about the WTC twin towers. They were impressive for their height but the architecture wasn't so much brutalist, but stark utiltarian with about as much warmth as a multi-level carpark.
Buildings like the Gherkin or 1 Bligh St are airy and spacious on the inside due to their innovative architecture. Bligh St being completely hollow similar to the Lloyds Building in London and the Gherkin's 5deg plate rotation creating vertical breezeways within the building.
Did you ever see the WTC in person? I found that it had a surprising number of sensitive human-scale details. Didn't read as such from afar, but up close it was no less humane than the Gherkin.
> The design of the Twin Towers is often called a "tube within a tube," referring to the fact that all of the weight of the building was supported by the external walls and an internal column. Previously, the exterior walls of a skyscraper were called curtain walls -- they weren't relied upon for strength, so it wasn't imperative that super-sturdy materials were used for them.
And from 9-11 Research:[1]
> The system of design of the World Trade Center Towers is called tubular framing, since the perimeter frames of the building are designed to act as a cantilevered tube in resisting lateral forces. This design concept (the so-called tube within a tube architecture) has been employed in the construction of many of the world's tallest buildings. These include the John Hancock Center (1105 ft), the Standard Oil of Indiana Building (1125 ft) and the Sears Tower (1450 ft).
I wouldn't rely on much else in that site, though.
Was there anything like that for the WTC, or was it "just" tallest?