

OMA architect-writer Rem Koolhaas recounts in his book "Content" (https://rkoolhaas.tripod.com/webonmediacontents/FF_120_beijing.pdf) that his atelier faced an intense dilemma when simultaneously invited to join the competition to resurrect Manhattan's World Trade Center district and another contest to build a broadcasting Ministry of Truth in China. Weighing the contrasting zeitgeist in the East and the West, and impelled by an oracle in the form of a fortune cookie, he says, "We chose China." But what if the oracle instead favoured Manhattan? This is an image of that alternative history, with OMA's next-generation tower transforming new-millennium New York rather than the People's Republic.