Nicholas Calcott
At 1,776 Feet, One World Trade Center is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere (sorry, Chicago) and the soon-to-be home of WIRED’s parent company, Condé Nast. The height is a skyscraping hat tip to the nation’s founding, but the real symbol of New York’s resilience sits atop the building’s 408-foot spire—a rotating white beacon composed of 264 50-watt LED modules that make it visible from as far away as Connecticut (a feature planned, but never implemented, for the original twin towers). As for the spire, it contains about 1,500 LEDs of its own—which could allow for a breathtaking light show. “We can define any hue or brightness level,” says Mark Domino, the digital-media artist behind the building’s illuminations. “There’s an RGB value charged to each light that can be controlled independently.” The result is millions of potential color combinations and even animation (building operator Durst Organization is developing a control system). Domino has real-time control over the lighting program via his phone, though he says he doesn’t know whether management will let him use this custom-built software when 1WTC opens later this year. And if he does get to program the lights live? “I would love to pool buildings together into one choreographed light show,” he says. That is, if the Empire State Building isn’t too intimidated to play along.
