The crackup of architecture appears to be never ending.

Freedom Tower, Schmeedom Tower.

The truth is architecture is dead. What you are witnessing is the twitching after the head has been severed from the body.

The WTC was ugly. Ugly and tall. And poorly designed. (Imagine if a large fire of non-terrorist origin had broken out in one of the towers which subsequently melted and collapsed. Then you'd know the name of the architect. But a plane? A plane! Who could build a building to withstand a plane ? )

The replacement could not help but be ugly, stupid, depressing, and boring, even without the security features. All that is built today is like that.

Here's the NYT's building critic dude. Why do I sense he is upset the My Lai Massacre wing of the Man Is Wolf To Man Museum might not make the cut? (Ha! I wish. Here's what the yahoos are proposing.)

(Thanks to Drudge for the heads way up.)

The darkness at ground zero just got a little darker. If there is anyone still clinging to the expectation that the Freedom Tower will become a monument of the highest American ideals, the current design should finally shake them out of that delusion.

Somber, oppressive and clumsily conceived, the project is a monument to a society that has turned its back on any notion of cultural openness. It is exactly the kind of nightmare that government officials repeatedly asserted would never happen here: an impregnable tower braced against the outside world.

On Wednesday, New York officials formally unveiled the redesigned Freedom Tower, an 82-story signature building at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. The enormous pedestal, with a budget estimated at $1.5 billion, would overlook the Sept. 11 memorial. "Construction will climax the greatest comeback in the history of our city," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The new design by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings Merrill is a response to the obvious security issues raised by the New York City Police Department, specifically, the tower's resistance to car and truck bombs. The earlier twisted glass form, a pastiche of ideas cobbled together from Daniel Libeskind's master plan and the bright minds at Skidmore, Owings Merrill, lacked grace or fresh ideas.

The new obelisk-shaped tower, standing on an enormous 20-story concrete pedestal, evokes a gigantic glass paperweight with a toothpick stuck on top.

(The toothpick-like spire was added so that the tower would reach its required symbolic height of 540 meters, or 1,776 feet - a reference to the year independence was declared.)

The temptation, of course, is to dismiss it as a joke. And it is hard not to pity Childs, who was forced to redesign the tower on the fly to meet the governor's rigid deadline.

Unfortunately, the tower is too loaded with meaning to dismiss. For better or worse, it will be seen by the world as a chilling expression of how the United States is reshaping its identity in a post-Sept. 11 context.
The most radical design change is the creation of the base, which will house the building's lobby and mechanical systems. Designed to withstand a major bomb blast, the base will be virtually windowless. In an effort to animate its exterior facades, the architects have said they intend to decorate them in a grid of shimmering metal panels. A few narrow slots will be cut into the concrete to allow slivers of natural light into the lobby.

The effort fails on almost every level. As an urban object, the tower's static form and square base finally brushes aside the last remnants of Libeskind's master plan, whose only real strength was the potential tension it created between the site's various structures.

In its earlier incarnation, for example, the tower's eastern wall formed a narrow pedestrian alley that became a key entry to the memorial site, leading directly between the proposed Freedom Center complex and the Memorial's north pool. The alleyway, which was flanked on its other side by the Frank Gehry-designed performing arts center, was fraught with tension; it is now a formless park littered with trees. (Emphasis mine.)

This is what passes for cleverness in the greatest city in the world. And don't forget a nazi reference for good measure:

But if this is a potentially fascinating work of architecture, it is, sadly, fascinating in the way that Albert Speer's architectural nightmares were fascinating - as expressions of the values of a particular time and era. The Freedom Tower embodies, in its way, a world shaped by fear.

Whether the Speer comparison is apt or not is beside the point. The point is there is no point to all of this. I suppose we should be thankful the suggestion the two towers be rebuilt exactly was rejected.

Absurdly, if the Freedom Tower were reduced by a dozen or so stories and renamed, it would probably no longer be considered such a prime target. Fortifying it, in a sense, is an act of deflection. It announces to terrorists: Don't attack here - we're ready for you. Go next door.

Actually, it is defiance, not deflection: "Go ahead and attack here, you medieval goat molesters, our technology will keep us safe".

But, this is where building critic dude comes closer to the truth. Absurd, yes. But because all modern architecture is absurd, not just the Freedom Tower project.

Of course, if he admitted that, he would be out of a job.