Time magazine captures One World Trade
The magazine greets New York's magnificent new skyscaper with an equally impressive photo shoot and video
The black-and-white shots of New York's iron workers eating lunch atop the city's half-built skyscrapers of 1930s New York captured a certain style of American news journalism. So, as One World Trade Center, the world's fourth tallest skyscraper, prepares to welcome new tenants, it is perhaps fitting that Time magazine finds a new way to capture New York's tallest building's construction and development.
The Top of America is a new interactive feature, similar to the New York Times' Shark and Minnow and Snow Fall projects. Like its competitors, The Top of America pairs documentary video footage with great written journalism, photography and other interactive features.
Most notably, the magazine has produced an incredible, 360 degree, zoomable photograph, shot from the top of the One World Trade. The images were overseen by the magazine's picture editor, Jonathan Woods, who was inspired by an earlier image from Time's archive, which captured the moment a worker changed the bulb on the Empire State Building's spire.
Woods' image is far more ambitious; he oversaw the building of a special jib, which was then hoisted to the summit of the new building, to take the 600 or so exposures which were then assembled into the final vista.
And, just as Woods' image takes Time's readers from 1,776 ft. summit right down to the pavement, so Josh Sanburn's article profiles everyone from the architect David Childs, who oversaw the project, through to today's iron workers who screwed the whole thing in place. It really is a wonderful piece. See it all here.
For more on 1930s-style iron workers shots, try to track down a copy of our Lewis Hine book; for more on what came immediately before World Trade One, consider our Joel Meyerowitz book, Aftermath; and for more on contemporary building, please take a look at The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century Architecture, the Phaidon Architecture Travel Guide App, and our recently launched Online Atlas. You can sign up for a free trial for that here.