What is Childs view of Libeskinds design for the Freedom Tower?
… I think Childs feels a skyscraper has two kinds of responsibility. It has to be true to a structural idea, and it has to be true to an urban idea. It has an urbanistic responsibility to connect and relate to its surroundings. I think he has had a problem with Libeskind’s Freedom Tower idea because it didn’t do either one of those things in his view. It didn’t really respond to the surroundings except in this very general way about the Statue of Liberty, and it didn’t really respond to structural reality either, because it was so asymmetrical. It’s a little harsh, because, in fact, the building as Libeskind conceived of it was more elegant and better proportioned than Childs gave it credit for, and would have worked rather well, I think, on that site. And Childs’ own vision for that building, which was very compromised over time as he and Libeskind tried to find a hybrid of their two ideas — Childs’ own vision wasn’t really so well related to that location or site anyway. It was a so
