An error reported in LA Times

Dear LA Times
Reading what was written on your paper on July 1, 2008,
Titled " World Trade Center construction faces more delays"
By Louise Roug
"Plans for the site in Lower Manhattan, where more than 2,600 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, include the Freedom Tower, an office tower designed by Daniel Libeskind. The building, now under construction, has been sharply criticized by architecture critics and embroiled in disputes between government officials and Larry Silverstein, the developer who held the lease on the World Trade Center."

The truth is Daniel Libeskind didn't design this version of the Freedom Tower. I wrote this essay exclusively for LA Times describing the evolution of the Freedom Tower design, highlighting its three main versions.


The first version of the Freedom Tower was a part of the winning scheme of Daniel Libeskind. It is fair to say that was big part of the reason why the public voted for his scheme; however, it wasn't that popular with knowledgeable critics. Libeskind was the sole designer of this version. This version was deemed too impractical to build and was superseded by Version 2 of the Freedom Tower .

The second version was a result of a "bloody" collaboration between Libeskind and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)'s Childs. A negative scandalous collaboration that dominated the headlines of New York City tabloids. This collaboration was detailed in books about the rebuilding process and was the subject of a few absence published cartoons. The quality of the collaboration showed clearly on the quality of the design. This version wasn't built and was superseded by the third version of the Freedom Tower .

The third version of the Freedom Tower is what is under construction now after bieng altered few times. Here is a quote about this version of Freedom Tower 9 I call it Version 3) from "UP FROM ZERO" for author Paul Goldberger, page 266, "And Childs, who cared most about getting credit for the design, could say this time that the Freedom Tower was more fully his own, almost entirely free of Libeskind's influence." Page 267 "And this dull building (meant Freedom Tower 3rd version) bore absolutely no resemblance to Daniel Libeskind's original design,". It is fair to say that this version was completely designed by SOM's Childs.
After writing this letter the "dull" design of the freedom tower got a lot "duller" and the entire scheme of Libeskind was completely ignored not only the freedom tower. LA Times never corrected their error. The seriousness of this error is that the rebuilding process concluded with Libeskind scheme as winning scheme. Then this scheme never were built and will never be build which conclusively declare the national, expensive and years-long rebuilding process, a major failure.