9/11 Memorial Visions: Innovative Concepts from the 2003 World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition by Lester J. Levine
McFarland, 2016
Paperback, 248 pages

One World Trade Center: Biography of the Building by Judith Dupré
Little, Brown, 2016
Hardcover, 286 pages

At first blush it makes perfect sense to review these recently published books together. After all, each one addresses a major element ? if not the two most important elements (or two of three if we consider Calatrava's Oculus) ? of the sixteen-acre World Trade Center site. Further, it appears the publication of each book was timed to the annual anniversary of September 11th, in this case fifteen years after the terrorist attacks that destroyed the Twin Towers. A fair number of books on the original WTC came out in the years after 2001, followed by books addressing redevelopment and Daniel Libeskind's winning master plan. But these two books are the only recent ones I'm aware of on the architecture of the WTC site, so it makes sense to bundle them together.
That said, the differences between the two books ? and their subjects ? situate them as nearly polar opposites to each other. One is focused on the memorial, specifically the 5,200 memorial ideas that did not win the competition and therefore were not built; the other is about the realization of the site's most prominent tower, what has become the tallest building in the western hemisphere since its 2015 completion. Along these lines, one prese...