A Plea to Jamie Dimon for Great Architecture

Memo to JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon: The tower you're proposing to build at the World Trade Center site, designed by Kohn Pederson Fox, is a monstrosity which will drage down both your reputation and the WTC site as a whole. Understood that the site is a difficult one. And yes, big trading floors will necessitate a big cantilever over the St Nicholas church. But here's the thing: cantilevers don't need to be this ugly. In fact, most cantilevers are really quite beautiful and impressive.

So after reading David Owen's piece on Arup's Cecil Balmond in the last New Yorker (slide show here), I have a proposal for you: fire KPF, who clearly have the imagination and verve of a flaccid haddock, and hire Rem Koolhaas/OMA instead. You want a cantilever? Check this out. Come up with something half as impressive as that, and you'll leapfrog the HSBC and Bank of China towers in Hong Kong to nab for yourself the status of being able to call home the greatest bank headquarters in the world.

It's quite sad that for all Wall Street's wealth, no New York bank has in living memory managed to build an architecturally distinguished building. Indeed, many bank buildings are breathtakingly ugly, including 85 Broad Street (Goldman Sachs) and 390 Greenwich Street (Citigroup). Don't follow in those dismal footsteps, Jamie. Rather, be bold!