Choosing Santiago Calatrava to design the tranport hub under the World Trade Center site is both “obvious and more than a little risky,” writes Christopher Hawthorne. “Why obvious? Because no architect in the world can match Calatrava’s talent for investing complex transportation projects, which are often pretty bland architecturally, with the kind of eye-catching, high-design appeal the public is expecting at Ground Zero. His buildings are rigorously conceived and meticulously executed but also playful, airy, and imaginative—a perfect combination of right and left brain. Why risky? Because Calatrava’s work has a personality—a pristine, sometimes aloof perfectionism—that seems an odd fit for the constricted and politically charged Ground Zero site.”