[John Jamieson]

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[John Jamieson]

Will the replacement buildings be of similar detail?

[gopgen]

It's slightly ominous...the WTC did in fact have a somewhat Islamic facade. I don't think that inspired the terrorists, however. If you want to break out the tinfoil for this post, that would be acceptable...but Mike Luckovich did a cartoon after the tragedy (which appeared in Newsweek) which showed the planes hitting a tall "Holy Quran," not the WTC. I don't think it would be inappropriate to say that the terrorists more or less set Islam back many years, and may actually have ended it (in its current form) as a "true religion/philosophy."

[Alberta's Child]

I don't think there's anything Islamic about the design. If you look at the top of the photo, you'll see that the structural columns are very close together (I think they were only 33 inches apart). The buildings could not be designed with those columns all the way up, since the space would not accommodate doors or anything of that sort at ground level. As a result, at the bottom of the buildings they had to tie these columns in "bundles" of three on top of larger columns spaced further apart.

[finnman69]

If you want to read magazine articles about the WTC from what is the foremost architecture magazine in the United States read this.

Architectural Record

[HoustonKevin]

See a good documentary on the WTCs Wednesday on the History Channel, 8:00PM Central.