While the basic design won over almost everyone involved with the project, including many of the governor’s advisers, Mr. Pataki asked the architect to amend it in late 2003. Specifically, he wanted Mr. Childs to reduce the upper structure from 2,000 to 1,500 feet, and to add a slender 276-foot antenna to make it a symbolic 1,776 feet tall. The alterations, unfortunately, made the design impossible to build, and eventually the entire concept was abandoned.

Image Credit... Grady White

So Mr. Childs presented the revised Freedom Tower, which meets Mr. Pataki’s interests but bears no resemblance to his initial design. It is in every way inferior, and those flaws — in terms of aesthetics, economics, security and ethics — are all rooted in the way in which it was conceived.

First, the aesthetics. The critics have not been kind to the Freedom Tower. The solid geometry is self-centered — this newspaper’s critic wrote that it “evokes a gigantic glass paperweight with a toothpick stuck on top” — without any sense of orientation or any recognition of its place in the skyline. This is a shame, especially considering what the same architects showed they were capable of next door, in the elegant new 7 World Trade Center building.

But it is understandable: not only were the architects rushed by Mr. Pataki, but after the ordeal of the first design’s development and rejection, it seems natural that Mr. Childs would reach for a simple geometry the second time around. The result, unfortunately, would be second rate in Chicago, Dubai or Shanghai, and should not be the symbol of New York City, let alone freedom.

Second, the finances of the new building are a disaster. The Freedom Tower will most likely cost around $3 billion to build, for 2.6 million square feet of office space. The cost of $1,150 a square foot is nearly twice what it cost to build the new Museum of Modern Art, for which I was also the engineer. Of the cost, about $1 billion will be paid with insurance money collected by the ground zero leaseholder, Larry Silverstein.