T.J. Gottesdiener?: . . . I did not realize the amount of public scrutiny, political scrutiny, media scrutiny that we were going to fall under. But it was also something that we felt very engaged in. We felt like we were on a mission to do something important, something right and to make sure that we brought together a team of people, architects, engineers, et cetera, that would make the best response possible . . .
One of the most important things that we wanted to do was to repair the hole in the sky—the tear in the sky. We wanted to put something back that was proud, resilient, uplifting. We thought the way to do that was with a very clear, strong,symbolic, iconic image. We tried to mark a couple of things in an uplifting way, in a positive way, about the original Trade Center. The original design of the Trade Center was a square, nominally 200 feet by 200 feet in plan, and that’s the footprint of the new design…
BBC World Service