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Personally I like the two latice towers. I say this as someone who has worked across the river and who is quite familiear with NYC. That proposal puts two tall towers back on the skyline, provide observation decks back at the height of those towers, and solve the problem of people not wanting office space at that altitude. And I can't emphasize enough how wrong the NYC skyline looks downtown without those two towers there (you can find stylized NYC skylines throughout Manhattan and most still have two towers downtown). Those latice work towers are the best hope of putting two tall towers back downtown and making the NYC skyline look "right" again. (Note that this impulse to put the two missing towers back led to the towers of light memorial. Two towers just belong there.)

As for the complaint about the museum being wedged into the towers looking like a memorial to the terorists, I don't see it that way. That's where the planes hit. That's where a lot of people died (especially in the sky lobby of the South Tower). That's where people jumped to their deaths from and that's where the people were stopped from descending before the tower collapsed. I think that the height, with a view, is a far better place for a museum than in a hole in the ground where a foundation was. It freezes the moment before the collapse, not the ruins after it and puts the height at which the tragedy took place into context. And having memorial platforms on top, where the old observation decks and Windows on the World were is also ideal, in my opinion. I don't want future generations robbed of the view I had when I visited the top of the WTC as a child.

Tall enough to make a statement. Realistic enough to recognize that people won't rent in a really tall building. Correct, in my opinion, in putting the museum up in the sky where it belongs. Also correct in providing a spectacular view from a memorial park in the sky, while giving those who prefer to memorialize the two towers as two holes in the ground get their foundation-level memorial, too. And, frankly, none of the blobs, points, or antennas that I've seen proposed, nor the hole that is currently there on the skyline feels right to me. Walk around New York. Look at all of the idealized skylines in paint, neon, and wire and see how many still contain two towers anchoring the south end of the city (you can see one on the corner of the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street). Nothing short of two towers will really make me happy, even if they are mostly framework, not solid buildings.

Realistic enough to recognize that people won't rent in a really tall building.

Oh really. Got proof of that? Are they abandoning the Sears Tower or the Transamerica Building?

That's one shaky premise.

And I can't emphasize enough how wrong the NYC skyline looks downtown without those two towers there

Too true. I agree with you on the lattice work towers; I also thought they were the best of the lot, and certainly a lot better than Liebeskind's jagged, hostile-looking creation.

I think there is a plan for light to be projected up through them, btw, to keep those twin beams of light that we all liked so much.