Battle Of WTC Design Criticism

A few weeks ago New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp attacked Daniel Libeskind’s design for the World Trade Center site. A number of observers were amazed at the attack and protested. The Times’ response? “This past Sunday the Times published an attack on the THINK design [the other design finalist] by New York University Art History Professor Marvin Trachtenberg – and in the space usually reserved for Muschamp, no less. Trachtenberg, in a thinly concealed response to the besieged Times critic, dismissed the THINK design as ‘an architectural Frankenstein monster’ and went on to praise Libeskind’s in glowing terms. ‘[I]t is in a class by itself in its deeply creative, organic relationship to the specificity of ground zero and its environment and meaning’.”