Saturday 7 May 2005

Freedom Tower's post-modernist architect sacked

The design for the so-called Freedom Tower at the Word Trade Center site has thankfully been scrapped. Donald Trump at least is happy: "It was an egghead design, designed by an egghead," he said, and for once on a question of aesthetics The Donald is right.

When Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center it was clear the attack was not just an attack on those proud soaring buildings and the people within, but as Ehud Barak said at the time it was an attack on civilisation itself. I said so too at the time.

What was needed as an architectural response was the swift design and construction of another proud and soaring thing, a building demonstrating defiance to the savagery that made such a replacement necessary, and a celebration of the values under attack. Something like Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Mile High Center' perhaps. What we got instead was dawdling, hand-wringing and eventually the decision to build a post-modern lemon designed by a fashionable idiot. Fortunately that decision has now been rescinded.

As TIADaily explains, "The awful design for the "Freedom Tower" at the World Trade Center site has been scrapped because of 'security concerns'—and if you believe that, you also believed that Dan Rather retired because he wanted to work on his golf swing. The column [here] speculates on the real reason for the change, but doesn't quite get to what I think is most important: everyone wanted to jettison postmodern architect Daniel Libeskind."

And thank God they now have. May we now get a real Freedom Tower worthy of the name.

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