Love Triangle

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Keep all that in mind when you step into the tour de force just inside the Hearst Tower. Instead of a conventional lobby, Foster has produced a massive indoor piazza, a 10-story atrium bathed in sunlight from overhead skylights and surrounded by the windowed masonry walls of Urban's original base, which give the appearance of exterior walls facing inward. At a time when cities have ever less interest in parks or open space, this is an office tower with a town square inside, not a shopping mall. "A building should try to give something back to the city in terms of public space," Foster says. Like most other architects, he believes that whether we like it or not, density is the future. That's not a bad thing, he hastens to add, so long as sufficient open space is provided within new buildings. He likes to remind people that the wealthiest, most sought-after parts of London are the most crowded. "Kensington, Belgravia, Mayfair are four or five times the density of the poorer boroughs," he says.

Foster also has a 65-story office tower planned for the World Trade Center site, not far from where the Freedom Tower is set to rise. His design for that project is still a work in progress. But the prospect that the good Lord might do something at that contested site is welcome news. It means that at least one tall building there may be worth looking up to.