Architects Should Not Feel Guilty About 9/11

The message of architect Eric Owen Moss (“Architects Ask, ‘What Did I Do to Cause This?’ ” Dec. 21) is truly horrendous: Don’t produce or create anything, especially anything beautiful or spectacular. Why not? Because it might justifiably offend some savage killers who hate civilization. Human survival and happiness depend upon spectacular creations, from the World Wide Web to the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright. What Moss feels guilty about is being a human being.

Michael S. Berliner

West Los Angeles

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Dear Architects: You didn’t do it. You didn’t cause the twin towers to come down. You built, you collaborated, you worked hard. You had opportunities; you took them and, one hopes, you built a better life for yourselves, your families and your communities. The worst thing you can be accused of is bad taste. And so what! Bad taste doesn’t kill people. The philosophies and actions based on hate took down the twin towers.

It wasn’t you.

Karen Falcon

New York

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As a designer of public buildings, I agree with architects who call, after Sept. 11, for “creating environments that are not only secure but also challenging and humane.” However, the solutions explored are simply defensive measures inadequate to the task of removing the impetus for attack in the first place. If we wish to reduce future terrorist attacks against us, we should seriously look at our role in creating and maintaining the insecure and inhumane political, economic and physical environments that provide recruits for organizations such as those that perpetrated Sept. 11 bombings.

If we, as architects and designers, are responsible for environments, then our responsibility in this particular case should include our responsibility as citizens. We have a measure of control over our nation, which happens to have quite a lot of influence, if not control, over much of the world’s social, economic and political environments. Expanding the scope of which physical environments are open to the challenge of humanization, beyond only affluent Northern ones, not only can lead to improving them, it can also lead to making ours more secure.

Erik Mar

Santa Monica