Archinect's critical round-up of BIG's Two World Trade Center Design

2015-06-10T16:40:00-04:00

Taken out of its high-profile context, the BIG design for Two World Trade Center initially appears to be a graduate school placeholder: here are the initial seven blocks of program, with a light dusting of foliage on the exposed step-backs. The internet's critical reaction to the renderings released to WIRED has been heated: it's the New Museum without the ingenuity, it's a brilliant melding of memorial gravitas and client-driven-design, it's nothing but spoon-fed media hype taken to a 1,300 foot extreme. Of course, this is a building that can't be taken out of its context, not only in terms of being a new icon of Manhattan, but also because it is something of a sequel: its unabashed boxiness and new media savvy presentation clashes with Foster + Partners' previous svelte, slanted diamond-topped design. A little more than 24 hours after the renderings were released, we've rounded up the most compelling critical and forum-based reaction:

In Vanity Fair, Paul Goldberger confronts the c...

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Archinect's critical round-up of BIG's Two World Trade Center Design