Twelve years ago, architect David Childs witnessed the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center from his office window in downtown Manhattan. Childs saw the landmark Twin Towers go up in flames and while he watched the buildings burn, another man observing the same scene turned to Childs and asked him if the towers would fall down. Childs immediately answered, “No.”
Childs recalls what he was thinking on September 11th, 2001: “I knew that if they (the Towers) hadn’t been knocked over, they wouldn’t fall down”, he says. “The fire would be put out. Never has a steel structure building in the history of steel structure buildings ever fallen down for the reasons of fire.”
Of course, the temperature of the fires at the World Trade Center was far from ordinary and the unthinkable did happen.
After the Twin Towers collapsed, the slow and painful effort to recover and eventually rebuild began. Childs, an architect with the firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, was later asked to design a new iconic skyscraper that would be built on part of the site of the former World Trade Center. His design, One World Trade Center, is the focus of “Ground Zero Supertower,” a NOVA documentary produced by our partner, WGBH.
On the 12th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Childs talks to The Takeaway about why he considers the building to be a strong symbol of American resilience.Â
“Ground Zero Supertower” airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET on PBS.