Robert Grudin's new book Design and Truth analyzes an interesting viewpoint on design. He goes through history pointing out the flaws in design and noting that when projects have poor outcomes it is often times because the designer is not true to their original design. This happens when politics, power and money enter the concept.
One of the most interesting examples he looks at in his book is the World Trade Center. Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of the World Trade Center in NYC originally proposed two 80-story towers, but in order to increase their profits, the developers demanded 110-story towers. If the project could be the world's tallest buildings,the developers could have more space to rent out and charge more for that space. Thus according to Grudin, Yamasaki altered his design to have more space by centralizing the escape routes to one on every floor instead of having three spread throughout the floor. Grudin states that because the designer did not stay true to his original design, the buildings were made taller with less escape routes.
Grudin then states that it is possible that if the building was true to its design and not built at this grand height, it may not have been a target for Al Qaeda. An even if it was, if the designer was true to the design, there would have been more escape routes and possibly more people may have survived.
The author expresses his modernist ideology that "form follows function" and writes an extremely compelling argument about design's responsibility.
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