"It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks"

Dutch architecture firm MVRDV said they proposed its “Cloud” design because it challenged the mundane shape of the typical skyscraper. A pair of luxury residential towers in Seoul would be joined in the middle by a cloud-like shape, billowing out like a tutu around two legs.

But when a press release went out about the design on Dec. 7, announcing the residences as part of a plan to extend the city’s business district, a playful cumulonimbus is not the image many saw. Instead, some were taken back to 9/11, and the smoke that filled the sky after the planes hit the World Trade Center.