[seanemmer]

That's a fair point - the author does spend a fair bit of time questioning the functional requirements themselves. I am not informed enough on urban planning or the circumstances surrounding the site to make a judgement there. I will, however, say that making the building 1) secure and 2) historically aware seem to be non-optional requirements given the nature of the site.

I was more so addressing the critique of the structure itself:

>One World Trade is symmetrical to a fault, stunted at its peak, its heavy corners the opposite of immaterial. There’s no mystery, no unraveling of light, no metamorphosis over time, nothing to hold your gaze

My point is primarily that such traits as those advocated by the critic, that the building be be ‘immaterial', ‘mysterious', and ‘metamorphosing', are highly subjective. I could just as easily state that the building ought to be ‘substantive', ‘familiar', and ’stable'. My architectural preference is for buildings that avoid trying to achieve any of these "qualities" of taste, but rather buildings that deliver elegant solutions to their objective requirements. If ‘mysteriousness’ is a necessary trait in order to achieve the function of the building, then so be it. But the critic simply attacks the building for lacking certain qualities that he has not adequately tied to the purpose and nature of the building.

[philwelch]

Yeah, it's not a very good or well-focused article, but it's hard to write convincingly on why a building looks ugly, right?

Was it strictly necessary to make the new WTC tower so secure against terror attack that it looks like a bunker from street level? The original Twin Towers weren't even destroyed from a street-level attack. They couldn't and didn't make the building airplane-proof, and if you're going to bomb something in NYC from street level the WTC is hardly the only or best target. So I think the security requirement was poorly thought through.

As for historical awareness, I think American culture is in the grip of sentimentality and nostalgia. This is the same country that stubbornly rebuilt a gradually sinking city that lays below sea level when it was inevitably destroyed by a hurricane. What's wrong with putting up a tasteful memorial and redeveloping the site in a way that meets the needs of the community?

[seanemmer]

Yea, at the end of the day there is just a ton of emotion tied up with this site - so you're right in that the security requirements / monumentality of it probably go beyond what the optimal specifications should be. It's kindof a timeless debate, how to balance the emotional with the rational (going way beyond just architecture). The emotional aspect is definitely supercharged in this case.