Architects Apologize for Design Echoing 9/11

A Dutch architecture firm is apologizing for the design of a new luxury high-rise it announced last week, after people complained it was reminiscent of the exploding World Trade Center on 9/11, reports Reuters. Called The Cloud, the development in Seoul, South Korea, called for two white high-rises of 54 and 60 stories, joined 27 floors up by a 10-floor "pixelated" cloud containing gardens, a sky lounge, and other amenities. But to many, the lumpy, swollen connection high up between the buildings represented two explosions shockingly reminiscent of the Manhattan tragedy.

Officials of the architectural firm MVRDV said they were surprised by the "media storm," and that they had received threatening emails and been called "al-Qaeda lovers and worse." MVRDV "deeply regrets any connotations The Cloud project evokes concerning 9/11," the firm wrote on its website. "It is one of many projects in which MVRDV experiments with a raised city level to reinvent the often solitary typology of the skyscraper. It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks, nor did we see the resemblance during the design process." (More architecture stories.)