Hot Topics | World Tech Center

Q&As - HOT TOPICS

The most frequently asked questions about the vision.

Last updated: 20th October 2026

What stage is this project currently at?

The World Technology Center is moving from its first phase, public awareness and conceptual design, into its second, stakeholder networking. The First Edition report, America's Twin Towers: History, Legacy, and the Case for Renewal, was published in August 2026.

Current work includes design refinement, interior modeling of the laboratories and public spaces, preliminary wind studies, the documentary and press kit, and early outreach to universities and institutions.

The full roadmap is on the Strategy page.

Do people still like to see the Twin Towers rebuilt?

Many do, and the evidence spans two decades.

In February 2005, an informal MSNBC online poll of nearly 3,500 readers found that 80 percent preferred new Twin Towers to the design then planned for Ground Zero. The Twin Towers Alliance petition gathered more than 9,000 signatures and comments from September 11 families and close friends, New Yorkers, service members and their families, and citizens of other nations. The full archive is on our community support page.

Support continues today. The World Technology Center's own community petition has received statements from across the United States and abroad, many from people too young to have seen the original towers.

None of this is a scientific measure of public opinion, and the project does not present it as one. It shows that the wish to see the towers' silhouette restored is real, widely held and enduring.

Isn't the World Tech Center an exact copy of the original World Trade Center?

No. The towers share the original's silhouette and its signature tridents, but they are entirely new buildings, structurally and architecturally.

The original 1960s design would not meet today's high-rise codes for fire safety and evacuation. The new towers are designed to exceed the high-rise provisions of the Chicago Construction Code and the International Building Code on which they are based.

The differences begin at the core. The original's gypsum-enclosed steel core becomes a meter-thick wall of Ultra-High Performance Concrete. Lightweight floor trusses become deep steel I-beams.

The perimeter becomes a frame of concrete-filled steel box columns, and the tridents become architectural cladding over them. The surrounding plaza and campus buildings are original designs, inspired by the legacy but distinct from it.

Is it a good idea to rebuild the Twins? Is it ethical for the affected families?

It is the question the project has weighed most carefully, and it deserves a direct answer.

After 2001, two convictions emerged among those who suffered most. Many, including many bereaved families, longed to see the towers rise again. Many others held, with equal sincerity, that the ground where the towers stood is a place of rest that must never be built upon. Both convictions are honorable.

That is why the World Technology Center is proposed for Chicago, not Lower Manhattan. The footprints at Ground Zero remain undisturbed as the National September 11 Memorial. What the project carries forward is the towers' silhouette and spirit, reimagined as a campus for science, education and international collaboration. It asks no one to give up their own conviction, and it does not claim to speak for all who mourn.

There is precedent for turning loss into learning. After the Space Shuttle Challenger was lost in 1986, the families of its crew founded the Challenger Center, which has since introduced millions of students to science and engineering.

The project's premise is that destruction need not have the last word. Remembrance stays in New York. Renewal is proposed for Chicago.

Isn't the WTC Towers' design copyrighted?

United States copyright law has protected buildings as architectural works only since the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act took effect on December 1, 1990. Buildings constructed before that date are excluded. The original World Trade Center was designed in the 1960s and completed in 1973, so its building design falls outside that protection.

The World Technology Center shares only the original's general external form: the silhouette and the tridents. Its structure, materials, interiors and campus are new designs, documented in our report and technical specifications page.

The project honors Minoru Yamasaki's authorship openly. The campus's central circle bears his name, and his conviction that the towers should be "a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace" is the principle the project carries forward.

Has this project been formally approved?

No planning approvals or funding commitments have been made. That is by design at this stage. The project completes its conceptual design and public outreach before it seeks capital or planning entitlements.

Formal briefings with the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois are a defined milestone of the current phase.

What safety features would the towers have?

Is this project really feasible?

Projects of this scale move from concept to construction through a long, structured process. The World Technology Center is at the start of it.

In Chicago, a campus of this size would proceed as a Planned Development. That means review by the Department of Planning and Development, a public hearing before the Chicago Plan Commission, and approval by City Council. Community input and the support of the local alderman are central to that process. The project intends to earn both.

Feasibility will be tested in stages, not asserted. An independent economic impact assessment, geotechnical and wind-engineering studies, environmental review, and a validated cost model are all milestones of the project's feasibility phase. Each will be published as it is completed.

Why Chicago instead of New York?

Chicago invented the modern skyscraper, and a project that aims to advance the supertall building belongs in the city that founded the art.

Chicago is also in the middle of a deep-technology expansion. The region hosts two Department of Energy national laboratories, Argonne and Fermilab, along with the Chicago Quantum Exchange and the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park now under construction on the Southeast Side. The City's Central Area Plan 2045 calls for growth in 21st-century sectors and for the reactivation of vacant and underused land near downtown. A science campus answers both.

Chicago also offers what New York cannot: land for a coherent, multi-building campus, a central national location, and a deep regional pool of engineering talent.

There is a further reason. In New York, the case for new towers and the case for preserving the footprints competed for the same ground. On new ground in Chicago, remembrance and renewal no longer compete. New York holds the original towers' memory, and holds it well.

Where is the site, and how would people get there?

The primary proposed site is about 35 acres on Chicago's Near West Side, bounded by West Harrison, West Polk and West Taylor Streets. It sits at the southwestern edge of the city's central area, close to the CTA Blue Line, Union Station's Amtrak and Metra services, and the city's expressway network.

The campus is planned as part of a connected district, not a standalone destination. The City's Central Area Plan 2045 already identifies improvements nearby, including Union Station upgrades, bus priority corridors on Canal and Clinton Streets, an enhanced Clinton Street bike and pedestrian route, and a planned Taylor Street bridge. The World Technology Center is designed to plug into that network.

Below ground, a weather-protected concourse would link every building on campus. The masterplan also proposes a dedicated CTA Blue Line station within that concourse, which would require study with, and agreement from, the Chicago Transit Authority.

Are there other cities where this could be built?

Chicago is the primary and strongly preferred location, and it is where the project's work is focused.

The concept is not tied to a single parcel of land. If the Chicago site ultimately proved unsuitable, for reasons of land, permission, infrastructure or cost, the model could be carried to another city, as the move from New York to Chicago once was. The project's purpose is to advance science, education and national capability. Its mission is larger than any one site.

Why didn't they rebuild the Twin Towers?

The question was settled by a planning process, a security review and a moral conviction, long before any rebuilding proposal could gain ground.

After 2001, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, a joint state and city body, led redevelopment planning with the Port Authority, which owned the site. Public meetings in 2002 emphasized preserving the towers' footprints as a memorial. In 2003, Daniel Libeskind's master plan was selected through a design competition. It set the footprints aside, restored the street grid, and called for a single 1,776-foot tower. That tower was developed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for leaseholder Larry Silverstein, and redesigned in 2005 after New York Police Department security concerns.

Twin Towers II, the proposal by structural engineer Kenneth Gardner and architect Herbert Belton, drew strong public support. But it arrived after the master plan had been built into environmental approvals, infrastructure design and agreements between the parties, and it never had control of the site.

Beneath the process lay a moral question. For many families, the footprints were a grave, and nothing should be built upon them. That conviction shaped the site as much as any agency did.

Do you have any strategies of how you would defend it against threats?

An exploratory idea consideration is an aerial threat detection and neutralization system on the roof of the towers. On the Science South Tower (the one with the spire reaching 1969 feet) would consist of a radar tracking system, radio interception and communication antenna (to validate the threat) and as a last resort either surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) or a multi-megawatt laser defense system (the type currently in use on specific US warships). They would be housed inside a secure compartment embedded in the crown strip moldings.

The advanced security and threat monitoring systems are being explored in alignment with federal regulations and modern high-rise safety practices. Any implementation would be subject to extensive technical, legal, and governmental review which is currently being explored.

The towers are designed to be among the most robust civilian structures ever proposed. Fire safety is where they depart most from the original.

Structure

Core: a 29 × 41 m (95 × 134 ft) core of Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC) with 1 m (3 ft) walls, built by slip-forming. It encloses all four stairwells and the elevator shafts.
Floors: deep I-beams of ASTM A514 steel, about 1 m (3 ft) deep, bolted to the core and the perimeter columns. A514 has a minimum yield strength of 690 MPa, roughly double today's standard structural grade and nearly three times stronger than in the original towers' core.
Perimeter: seven major box columns per face, each 90 cm (3 ft) square, welded from A514 plate and filled with concrete after assembly. At the base, nineteen columns per face carry loads to the foundation through transfer trusses on the sixth and seventh mechanical floors.
Redundancy: four sets of outrigger trusses tie the core to the perimeter. If any member is damaged, its load redistributes through alternative paths, which guards against progressive collapse.

Fire and life safety

Four pressurized stairwells per tower, wider than typical, so occupants can descend while firefighters ascend.
A dedicated fire service access elevator in each tower, with backup power and pressurized lobbies.
Sprinklers throughout, with foam suppression of the kind used in aircraft hangars in laboratories and high-hazard spaces.
Standpipes on every floor, fed by the 1,000-tonne liquid tuned mass damper tanks near the top of each tower, which double as gravity-fed firefighting reserves.
Conventional heat and smoke detection, backed by AI-assisted video and multi-sensor detection.
Permanently staffed on-site fire teams in each tower's sky lobbies, with an optional (exploratory) deployable launch platform for firefighting drones.

The original towers asked their occupants to descend alone. These towers are designed so that help is already inside, and ascending, from the first alarm.

Full drawings are on the Technical Specifications page.

Are there other Twin Tower buildings around the world?

Yes, there are strikingly similar buildings that currently exist in the United States and around the world (mainly in China) that are directly inspired or loosely based from the original World Trade Center silhouette in New York. They are:

The Ruitang Plaza Twin Towers in Wuhan China, built in 1996. Its 105 metres tall and features a striking resemblance of the WTC tridents.

The Zhejiang Gate Towers in Hangzhou, China. Standing approximately 300 meters tall and expected to be completed in 2026.

China WTC Tower III near Beijing. Completed in 2010 and standing 331 meters in height.

AON Center in Chicago, standing 362 metres high (the tallest in this group) and completed in the same year as the New York World Trade Center opening - 1973.

BOK Tower in Tulsa Oklahoma. It was opened in 1976 and standing 203 m, and indeed it was designed by the same WTC architect - Minoru Yamasaki. He was hired because the developer’s CEO wanted a replica of Yamasaki’s Twin Towers design in Oklahoma, citing his impression with the New York WTC.

The new Spectra building at the University of Hertfordshire College Lane Campus, Hatfield, UK. Built between 2021 and opened in late 2024, it’s loosely based from the WTC according to a promotional document press kit from 2021. It’s resemblance are notably the rectangular windows, vertical gray facade, and all steel skeleton. It’s 25 m high.

Early media reports in March 2026 stated that the vision is a Data Center. Is this true?

No. Some third-party reports described it that way in March 2026, and the description was inaccurate.

The campus is a hub for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It is built around laboratories, cleanrooms, workshops, teaching space and offices, with public amenities that include a library, gardens and a shopping concourse.

Computing labs and supercomputing servers are part of the program, but only a small fraction of it.

The confusion appears to have come from the popular conflation of the word "technology as "consumer electronics, AI and internet data centers."

The World Technology Center is a campus for science and technology in the fullest and fundamental sense.

How much would the project cost to build?

The current working estimate is about $15 billion, within a range of roughly $10 billion to $20 billion.

It is a planning figure, not a quotation. A validated cost model is a milestone of the feasibility phase and will replace this estimate when it is published.

When would this project be realized?

The working target is construction through the 2030s and 2040s, with the full campus open by 2050.

Construction would be phased. Early campus buildings would open and serve tenants while later stages, including the towers, proceed. Each stage is consolidated before the next begins.

Is the project a military or defense facility?

No. The World Technology Center is a civilian campus for research, education and public engagement.

Early concept material explored ideas for aerial threat detection, including radar and, in its most speculative form, active defense systems. Those ideas were preliminary and exploratory. They are not part of the core program, they are not an operational proposal, and they do not define the project.

Security for the towers would follow the practice of other high-profile civilian buildings: robust structure, layered access control, monitoring, and close coordination with Chicago's emergency services and the relevant federal agencies. Responding to aerial threats is the responsibility of government authorities, not of a building's owners.

References
(non exhaustive)

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