hankyoreh

Photo, left shows the design for a South Korean housing and business complex to be built in Seoul’s Yongsan international business district.

Dutch architectural firm MVRDV has been under fire after Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad raised an issue about the design by publishing a front-page article with the headline of “Inspired by Twin Towers?” on Sep. 9. (local time) MVRDV recently announced its design for the two landmark towers, 60 story and 54 story, respectively and connected with corridors during its briefing on the Yongsan Dream Hub project. The project designer is Daniel Libeskind, the master plan architect for reconstruction at New York's Ground Zero.

“It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks nor did we see the resemblance during the design process,” MVRDV stated in a post on its Facebook page that day. “We sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings we have hurt, the design was not meant to provoke this.”

“A real media storm has started and we receive threatening emails and calls of angry people calling us Al Qaeda lovers or worse,” the firm said.

The project is slated to be completed in 2015.

(Photo courtesy of Yongsan Development Company, Story by Kwon Tae-ho)