‘Twin tower’ skyscraper design touches a nerve
posted at 2:12 pm on December 10, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
On paper “The Cloud,” a residential high-rise project planned for Seoul, South Korea, sounds harmless enough. The design, by Dutch design firm MVRDV, calls for a pair of slender, straight-sided towers connected by a sky bridge at the 27th floor. Except for the height of the towers—one will rise to 984 feet, the other 853 feet—the description could apply to any number of extant structures, most notably the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.
However, the design element that sets this one apart from others—a whimsical “pixelated cloud” of terraced apartments jutting out from the buildings—has become the center of a controversy. To many viewing this architect’s rendering, the “cloud” conjures up disquieting memories of smoke billowing outward from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2011.
The project is still on schedule for completion in 2015. Yet, the negative reaction to the design has been so widespread that MVRDV felt the need to release a statement of apology that reads in part:
MVRDV regrets deeply any connotations The Cloud projects evokes regarding 9/11.
The Cloud was designed based on parameters such as sunlight, outside spaces, living quality for inhabitants and the city. It is one of many projects in which MVRDV experiments with a raised city level to reinvent the often solitary typology of the skyscraper. It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks nor did we see the resemblance during the design process. We sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings we have hurt, it was not our intention.
Well, maybe not overtly. The Weekly Standard writes that of MVRDV’s Jan Knikker told the Dutch-language newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, “I have to admit that we also thought of the 9/11 attacks.”
In fairness to the architect, Daniel Libeskind, the similarities between The Cloud and the Twin Towers on 9/11 is less apparent from perspectives other than ground level, as the images in this slideshow reveal. Libeskind, should the name fail to ring a bell, was the designer of the original “master plan” for the reconstruction of Ground Zero.
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Libeskind is a self-promoting hack. If this had been any other architect I probably would have accepted the explanation, but this idiot has spent his entire career going out of his way to draft hideous deconstructivist monstrosities with the explicit attempt to remind people of pain and suffering. I’m serious, look it up. To say he “never realized the resemblance” is a blatant lie.
Daikokuco on December 10, 2011 at 2:29 PM
On top of grossly inappropriate, it’s also ugly.
I can’t believe people pay for crap like that.
Merovign on December 10, 2011 at 3:54 PM
Why not a real Dutch design, a giant heroin needle?
Smedley on December 10, 2011 at 4:56 PM
Yeah. It’s not believable, really, to construct two square towers and put them in as nearly exactly the same relationship as the WTC were to each other and then claim to be unaware of the similarities–it would be referential even without the added explosive visual. And then mix in that Liebeskind is the designer, and there’s really nothing they could say that would make me believe this was unintentional.
TexasDan on December 11, 2011 at 9:31 PM
Distasteful, to say the least. “Whimsy” can only excuse so much.
Green Tree on December 12, 2011 at 12:24 AM
Upon further reading, Weekly Standard makes it clear that Liebeskind is not the designer of these towers, but did the master plan for the complex of which these towers are a part. He may not have even seen the design.
But the actual design firm MVRDV, admitted in an interview in Dutch what they later try to deny in their apology.
TexasDan on December 12, 2011 at 10:23 AM
Muslims love this design and don’t know what the fuss is all about.
Roy Rogers on December 12, 2011 at 11:50 AM