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Bizarre Seoul Twin Tower Design Evokes 9/11
By wchung | 15 Jun, 2025

Nightmare Cloud: US 9/11 survivors are upset by an ambitious S. Korean luxury apartment project.

A South Korean developer said Monday that it would not change the design for twin towers that Americans say evokes bad memories of the September 11, 2001 attack on Manhattan’s World Trade Center towers.

The towers are known as The Cloud and are designed by the Dutch architectural firm MVRDV. One tower is 60 floors high and the other is 54 floors. They are connected by a cloud-shaped bridge that houses a swimming pool, restaurants and lounges. The peculiar shape of the cloud bridge has provoked protests by families of 9/11 victims for evoking the billowing of smoke from the World Trade Center towers in the moments after terrorists flew a Boeing 747 into each tower.

MVRDV insists the design is meant to evoke a dreamy cloud formation in the sky and has no thematic link to the 9/11 attack. That explanation has been greeted with skepticism, derision and anger by many online posters.

The towers will be completed by 2016 to mark one entrance to Seoul’s new international business district known as the Dream Hub to be built on land to be vacated by the US Eighth Army Garrison currently occupying prime real estate at Yongsan.

The towers will be luxury residential towers connected halfway up by a 10-floor-high passage MVRDV calls a “pixilated cloud” that houses “a large connecting atrium, a wellness center, conference center, fitness studio, various pools, restaurants and cafes.”

“A real media storm has started and we receive threatening emails and calls of angry people calling us Al Qaeda lovers or worse,” reads MVRDV’s Facebook page. The firm says it did not “see the resemblance during the design process”.

“MVRDV regrets deeply any connotations The Cloud projects evoke regarding 9/11,” says its statement. “It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks nor did we see the resemblance during the design process. We sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings we have hurt.”

Its apology followed a Dutch front-page news story showing an artist’s conception of the project with the headline: “Inspired by Twin Towers?” However, MVRDV’s site contains hundreds of mostly-negative comments.

The Cloud “was designed based on parameters such as sunlight, outside spaces, living quality for inhabitants and the city,” says MVRDV.

The South Korean press saw no visual link to 9/11 and “hailed the project as a great innovation.” The Korean media has reported that the negative connotations came solely from the US.

“I think it’s a total lie and they have no respect for the people who died that day,” said a retired New York City deputy fire chief. He lost one of his four firefighter sons during the attacks. “It looks just like the towers imploding. I think they’re trying to sensationalize it. It’s a cheap way to get publicity.”

“The designer said that he was inspired by the clouds around the building,” wrote an apparently Korean blogger, reflecting what appears to be the prevailing sentiment in S. Korea. “I just find weird that some people immediately associate it with fire and smoke.”

While there is some anti-US sentiment on the part of a minority of younger S. Koreans, the majority of the population have generally positive feelings toward the US and would not want to alienate its most important ally and second most important trading partner. At the same time, many S. Koreans resent what they perceive as undue US influence over their nation’s politics and may resist appearing to be buckling to US pressure on any part of a project seen as embodying S. Korea’s emergence as a major global economic power.

A South Korean developer said Monday that it would not change the design twin towers that Americans say evokes bad memories of the September 11, 2001 attack on Manhattan's World Trade Center towers.

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