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Architects Sorry People Think Twin Towers With 9/11-ish "Cloud" Resembles WTC On 9/11
By
Jen Chung
Published Dec 11, 2011
Modified Dec 11, 2011
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By
Jen Chung
Published Dec 11, 2011
Modified Dec 11, 2011
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Renderings for a South Korean residential development raised eyebrows last week because the two connected towers, named "The Cloud," resemble the World Trade Center's Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The Dutch architecture firm, MRVDV, issued a statement, "MVRDV regrets deeply any connotations The Cloud projects evokes regarding 9/11," and then added on its Facebook page, "A real media storm has started and we receive threatening emails and calls of angry people calling us Al Qaeda lovers or worse."
NY1 spoke to some New Yorkers, who said things like, "I thought it was a picture of what happened. I didn't realize it was a picture of what a building would look like," and "It looks disturbing. Because it looks like the building is coming apart." Another felt, "To me it doesn't look like the towers collapsing because the towers collapsed from the top down, I don't buy it, I think some people have an over-active imagination.
Here's MRVDV's statement:
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.
The design inspiration of The Cloud is visualised in the first image on our website, a cloud covering the centre of the Sky scraper.
Still, if you design two tall, boxy skyscrapers that will be next to each other, wouldn't you think of the original World Trade Center? And the Daily News reports, "A Dutch newspaper quoted the firm’s spokesman as saying the designers had thought about the obvious parallels." It's unclear if the firm will alter the designs.
Tagged
9/11
architecture
mrvdv
south korea
the cloud
world trade center
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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