Freedom Tower redesign published

THE plan for the Freedom Tower at the former World Trade Center site features a more bomb-resistant design pushed well away from the street and incorporating heavily protected elevators and utilities.

The details are part of a redesign set out yesterday for the soaring skyscraper in lower Manhattan, a project that has been delayed by bureaucratic squabbling.

The new design for the 1,776-foot tower is meant to make it more resistant to truck bombs. The building will now be 90 feet - instead of 25 feet - from West Street, the major north-south thoroughfare along the Hudson River.

The tower’s cubic base will be clad in luminous materials - probably a combination of stainless steel and titanium - that will be shimmering and light-reflective as well as blast-resistant, according to a description of the redesign posted online by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

As in the original design, the structure outlined in the latest plan exceeds city fire code requirements, and will have biological and chemical filters in its air supply system. It also has the original design’s extra-wide emergency stairs, a dedicated staircase just for firefighters, enhanced elevators and “areas of refuge” on each floor. Stairs, communications, sprinklers and elevators will be encased in three-foot-thick walls.

The tower will be capped with a mast incorporating an antenna, meant to suggest the torch of the Statue of Liberty.