When the twin towers of the World Trade Center made their horrific descent on September 11, 2001, the unimaginable loss of life and the sheer scale of the disaster paralyzed the world. The towers remained a ghostly, smoking presence on the Manhattan skyline for days, followed by the painstaking removal of remains and building debris.

I should probably note right here that I'm not an architect, nor am I a New Yorker. But the WTC was an indelible fixture not only for people who live in Manhattan, but also for anyone who was familiar with the city itself. The towers dominated the visual imagination of what New York was, and in many ways, came to define the city itself: larger than life, aggressive in their scope, focused on the bustle of commerce.

All of which contributes to the difficulty of building again on the WTC location. The process also needs to consider the fact that this space is a burial site - some may even deem it a battleground. The plans to rebuild were met with various reactions by New Yorkers, by designers, by pundits, by the families of those killed.

As if all of this isn't complicated enough, the design was chosen in a competition overseen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., and the owner of the site, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease on the former WTC, has also been a vocal presence. Nine plans were submitted, and the project awarded to Daniel Libeskind, a decision not without continuing controversy in and outside New York. His design, the centerpiece of which is a 1,776 foot spire, taller than the original buildings, also features a memorial 30 feet below grade level. Libeskind is best known for designing the Jewish Museum in Berlin; he also designed the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England. This would be his largest commission -- by far.

Silverstein and Libeskind have recently been making news over their inability to agree on the design or the process for carrying it out. Silverstein insists that Libeskind's design will be the "inspiration" for what is actually built. Libeskind disagrees and is also demanding greater control over elements not originally awarded to him in the competition, namely the Freedom Tower and transit hub. But should this disagreement really be news?

The building as celebrity predates the architect as celebrity. In fact, I'll bet that if you're like most people, you can't even name the architect of the World Trade Center. (To save you the Google search, it was Minoru Yamasaki. Not a household name, at least not in my household.) But in our headline-hungry culture, there is a certain twisted logic to the fact that buildings are now so often prefaced by the name of the architect. It implies more than design -- it implies glamour, even branding. Foster's Reichstag, Gehry's Guggenheim Museum. The designer has supplanted the owner, who has traditionally had the privilege of naming his building (although these days, it's the sponsor with the deepest pockets who gets those bragging rights. Hence we have those weirdly named sports arenas like the Office Depot Center, home of the Florida Panthers)

The celebrity factor contributes in large part to why Libeskind won the competition in the first place. Otherwise, why not give the commission to a small consortium of designers with great ideas but no "name"? The irony? Our unnamed (and unselected) schlubs likely have as much experience designing this kind of complex mega-project as does Libeskind. That would be exactly none. On the other hand, there are scores of design firms who have extensive experience building these kinds of projects, but whose principals have no marquis value. In every city in the world, you can look around and see these buildings: office towers, largely, or the aforementioned arenas. They are competent; they do the job: lots of square footage at prices the developers like because they can then rent them out at even higher prices. But their designers remain, largely, ciphers.

Libeskind's battle with Silverstein over the design is all too reminiscent of Ayn Rand's hero Howard Roarke who, raging against the demands of a developer, eventually blew up one of his megaprojects rather than see it bastardized. At this point, Libeskind's reaction, as it has been reported in the media, appears to be more of a hissy fit than an act of creative (or actual) vandalism, but one can only speculate what his final design will be, given how keen the developer seems to be to distance him from the project.

Not only are architects today's rock stars, but so are their buildings. We have lost our appreciation of the simple concept of space, and the ability to walk into a building and be overwhelmed by its contemplative qualities. There must be features, amenities; the cladding has to be a unique material with the highest hanging forest in the world in an atrium heretofore unseen. It's less of a building and more of an amusement park for the senses. It's not enough to seduce by subtlety; you have to sell people on the "experience" of entering or even viewing the building itself. The Bilbao is a twisted metallic form unique in its initial inception and now mimicked endlessly -- even by Gehry himself -- in the hopes of recapturing the initial effect in what seems to now be almost a franchise concept. Can't get to Spain? Go to Los Angeles and "experience" Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall. Can't get to Los Angeles? Read the breathless coverage in last month's "Vanity Fair."

As they say, everything old is new again. In the high Gothic period of the late middle ages, cities competed for the honor of having the most spectacular, largest, most eye-catching cathedral. These could take decades to complete, usually outlasting the lives of the original architects and craftsmen. The power of the building was used to draw people to the city, a shrine to man's ability to create something so much larger than himself. In our secular society, have we lost the ability to represent what is sacred in a quiet way? In the end, do we want to memorialize the hundreds of lives lost with a bigger shopping arcade or a higher tower? To Libeskind's credit, he is at least attempting to honour the lives of the World Trade Center dead by retaining the exposed slurry walls of the original WTC site, to connect what is to what was lost.

Frank Lloyd Wright, an uber-celebrity architect even in death, said it best when he was interviewed by the "New York Times Magazine" in its October 4, 1953 issue when he noted, "The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines -- so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings."

Libeskind's career took him from America to Germany and has now brought him back to America. But no matter how far he may go from here, this building will follow him. Whether or not he chooses to own the final design, it will inevitably be Libeskind's World Trade Center, resurrected, for good or for ill. The world will be watching and there will be no place far enough to get away.

About Evelyn Yallen

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