ENSHRINING THE TOWERS

The only existing scale model of the original World Trade Center twin towers has been "painstakingly restored" and is "on view in a darkened chamber at the American Architectural Foundation's Octagon Museum" in Washington, Benjamin Forgey reports.

"The visitor turns a corner at the second-floor landing of the Octagon's elegant 18th-century stairwell, enters the room on the right and comes face to face with the spotlighted twin towers -- stark white forms on a pedestal in a plexiglass box," he writes today in The Washington Post. The sight of the model in its "shrinelike setting," strikes Forgey as "at once odd and oddly appropriate. It is strange to see an architectural model treated almost like a religious icon. Yet it feels right in the aftermath of the trade center's awful destruction two years ago."

When you look at the model -- it was created by Minoru Yamasaki, the architect who won the commission to design the original towers -- what does it remind you of? (Enlarge the photo.) To me, it evokes nothing so much as the "Tribute in Light," which was installed at Ground Zero six months after 9/11 as a temporary memorial to those who died. (Here's a night shot of the tribute and here's another.) More even than those photos, a schematic 3D animation of the tribute shows a stunning similarity to Yamasaki's architectural model. (Scroll down and click on 3D animation.)

Next month, if it holds to its schedule, a jury of artists, architects, urban planners and others will choose a winner in the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition from more than 5,000 entries. Let's hope the creators of the Tribute in Light entered it. Although it was meant as a temporary memorial, many people were so moved by it they wanted it to be permanent. Now, after comparing it to Yamasaki's model, that makes more emotional sense than than ever.