Daniel Libeskind's inclusion on the short list of architects who have been asked to propose designs for rebuilding the World Trade Center site and the region around it represents for him a great leap forward. His skewed, dismembered WTC design has been vehemently criticized for its intentional shock effect, but it is this very quality that endears it to the avant-garde. We wish to find a reasonable basis for analysis that bypasses the usual terms of debate on architectural deconstruction. That so far only generates polemics without hope of sensible resolution. Towards this end, it is necessary to dig deeper than superficial style.

Libeskind's participation in the WTC project symbolizes a jump from buildings that crystallize a particularly horrific experience, but do not seek to move on from it--such as his Jewish Museum in Berlin--into buildings that are meant to symbolize, even contribute to, "regeneration." Nevertheless, there is essentially no difference between what he believes commemorates death, and what commemorates life, for the simple reason that he gives them exactly the same geometrical properties. Whatever life he thinks he is injecting into his "regenerative" work is no more than the artificial appearance of life, as in a Golem, or Frankenstein monster--terms that will recur later in this essay.