NYC "Freedom Tower" Design Goes to Committee

No one should underestimate how difficult it is to reconcile security with the building's symbolic importance and its commercial viability.
It's easy to say that every precaution should be taken and no expense should be spared. The unpleasant reality is that what makes a building safe may well make it unusable, or at least unrentable, as a commercial building. And however soaring the architectural rhetoric, a symbol of American resilience will be an empty one, on every level, if no one wants to rent it.
Officials at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and at developer Silverstein Properties are officially mum about what new security criteria will be incorporated, but analogous situations offer lessons. [via UnknownNews.net]