4 World Trade Center belongs to a collective group of buildings following the “Memory Foundations” redevelopment master plan by Studio Daniel Libeskind. It was the first completed building on the original 16-acre World Trade Center site, and one of five skyscrapers forming a spiral composition of stepping buildings around the National September 11 Memorial Park. Occupying a full city block bounded by Greenwich, Church, Cortland, and Liberty Streets, the site is prominently staged towards the Memorial Park to its west, and Zuccotti Park (a portal to Wall Street and Lower Manhattan) to the southeast - a rare and privileged setting within the dense Manhattan urban fabric.

4 World Trade Center’s 72 stories reach a height of 977 feet (298 meters), with 2.3 million square feet (213,700 square meters) of office and retail space. Offices occupy 56 floors, in two distinctly configured floor plates. The low and mid-rise sections are configured in a 44,000 square foot parallelogram, echoing the site shape. The high-rise section is a 32,000 square foot trapezoid. In combination, they create a triangulated sculptural form, chiselled at the top, with a rotational pivot at its corner – thereby fulfilling the building’s formal role in Libeskind’s master plan.

Designed to create a strong, quiet sculptural effect, from a distance 4 World Trade Center appears as a minimalistic sculpture, its angular profile distinguishing itself in the skyline. The building is clad in colorless silver glass that changes appearance depending upon the time of day, weather and light - at times transforming from a distinct sculptural object to meld and disappear into the sky. Each of the 11,000 structurally glazed curtain wall units contains a single lite of insulated glass 5’ wide by 13’-6” high, concealing the spandrel section via a horizontal touch mullion, enhancing the Tower’s highly abstract quality. Upon closer approach, this sculptural volume is no longer perceived, and the building’s lobby and public areas establish a sense of place that is richly spatial. At this scale, 4 World Trade Center reveals itself as a piece of architecture through its unique spatial qualities, tactile materiality, use of color, and refined detailing.