Towering Disagreement

Architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind are disagreeing over the tower for the site of the World Trade Center. “Libeskind continues to press for the design he sketched in his competition-winning master plan – an asymmetrical tower roughly 70 stories tall, with a slender spire that would echo the upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty and culminate an upward spiral of a group of slice-topped office buildings. Childs, who heads the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, wants a more monolithic form — a muscular tower that twists as it rises, topped by a latticelike crown that includes antennas. His design, however, has not been made public. Can the two architects compromise without compromising the form – and thus, the meaning – of Libeskind’s brilliant ground zero vision?