Why the Twin Towers architect would hate the World Trade Center complex design

Made of concrete and featuring tiny, slit-shaped windows, the design of the Twin Towers reflected architect Minoru Yamasaki's penchant for gothic design and his fear of heights.

But critics hated it - especially the New York Times' Ada Louise Huxtable, who penned a harsh review of the towers in 1973.

Yamasaki responded to Huxtable's review in a letter that was recently found by the Guggenheim Museum's architecture publication, CLOG and screenshotted by The Awl.

In his defense of the Twin Towers, the architect who passed away in 1986 actually delivers a posthumous critique of the yet-to-be-completed World Trade Center complex.

"For me, the day of the all-glass building is finished," Yamasaki wrote. "As for mirror glass, I detest it."

Fast-forward to the 2010s and it seems all the buildings going up in Manhattan are glass towers - including the completed One World Trade Center, which stands adjacent to the memorialized sites of the fallen Twin Towers.

While reviews of 1 WTC have been mixed (mostly to the tune of a quote that called it "not so bad"), critics pretty much universally loathed the design of the Twin Towers when they debuted.

Here's the entirety of Yamasaki's letter excerpt on glass buildings, as found by CLOG and noted by the Awl:

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