Ladies and Gentlemen, the New World Trade Center

The proposals for the new World Trade Center have been unveiled. Yes, that giant waffle thing pictured above is one of them. And yes, it's not only breathtakingly ridiculous, it's also completely unbuildable, both structurally and financially. Judging by what I can see in the article, the others aren't much better; there's nary one in the bunch that's not either aesthetically vomitous or inherently unstable or both. Considering the original buildings, which were marvels of economical and practical structural engineering, it's somewhat bewildering that respected architects proposed to replace them with designs so completely uneconomical, both in terms of cost and use of space. It's even more bewildering that each design team got $40,000 for their unusable results.

Is this the future of skyscraper design? Thankfully, probably not. But I'd be curious to see what is.