ronworkman:

In some of the worst Gawker reporting of all time, America shows the world that it isn’t smart enough to understand that the above images, are not the same as photographs of a terrorist attack in 2001. Gawker using ‘a new twin towers’ is a classless and sad attempt at evoking drama. 

Questions: Does anyone really think that this building was intentionally designed to mimic or mock a few seconds of smoke/explosions coming from the World Trade Center buildings? Are there people that think the Dutch design firm is attempting to take a jab at the U.S.A. here? Would this building have been considered amazing and/or beautiful in the year 2000? If it had existed before the attacks, would it then become offensive after the attacks? If an American firm designed a building to be built in the U.S. that happened to resemble a few seconds of a tragedy in a place like Bangladesh, do you think you would ever even hear about it?

The design company actually made a comment:

The Cloud was designed based on parameters such as sunlight, outside spaces, living quality for inhabitants and the city. 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. We sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings we have hurt, the design was not meant to provoke this.

My favorite comment: (in jest) We should ban all wave pool facilities, since it reminds some people tsunami.