At Ground Zero, a towering copycat? On Freedom Tower, he says, no free ride
A young architect says his idea stolen
He was reading a newspaper on his way to his internship at a local architecture firm. As his train crossed the Charles River, a stamp-sized, black-and-white picture caught his eye. He pulled the paper closer, wondering whether it was what he thought.
A few days later, in December 2003, Thomas Shine saw a larger picture, and then he was sure. The original design for downtown Manhattan's Freedom Tower, the soaring skyscraper meant to replace the World Trade Center and echo the Statue of Liberty, looked too much like a model he designed four years before as an architecture student at Yale.
Within a year, he sued.
''I felt the dual emotions of being thrilled and cheated," said Shine, 41, who now lives in Brookline and works in town with his wife at a firm called Choi + Shine. ''If someone came and took something off my desk, [no one] would hesitate to say that's wrong. This case is about principle: Do I have the right to the protection of my own work?"
Last month, a federal judge ruled that enough similarities exist between David M. Childs's 2003 Freedom Tower design and Shine's 1999 student architectural project that a copyright-violation lawsuit Shine filed last year against Childs and his firm, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, could continue.
Shine argued that Childs copied his Olympic Tower project at the Yale School of Architecture, which Childs saw as a jurist reviewing students' work and complimented for its ''very beautiful shape," according to Retrospecta, Yale's architecture school magazine.
In allowing the case to go forward, Michael B. Mukasey, chief judge of the US District Court in Manhattan, said in his ruling that the two concepts have a ''similar 'total concept and feel' that is immediately apparent even to an untrained judicial eye." But he added: It's ''possible, even likely, that some ordinary observers might not find the two towers to be substantially similar."
A spokeswoman at Skidmore argued that any resemblance is a coincidence.
''With any high-profile project, there are claims of plagiarism," said Elizabeth Kubany, the spokeswoman. ''We believe that [Skidmore] will prevail in court, because many of the design elements of the Freedom Towers are ones that David Childs and [Skidmore] as a firm have been exploring for years."
In court documents, Skidmore lawyers argue Childs and Shine were merely influenced by the same architectural precedents. They cite examples of other buildings that use a ''diagrid" support structure and the twisting and weaving facade of both Childs's Freedom Tower and Shine's Olympic Tower.
''Granted, there are similarities . . . but those similarities derive solely from the fact that each is -- or purports to be -- a modernist skyscraper, constructed of steel with some visual warping and a textured glass skin," argue Childs's lawyers, Richard Williamson and Marcia Paul, in their response to Shine's complaint.
They also argued Shine's copyright is invalid because he didn't register it until 2004, after he saw the design of Freedom Tower.
However, Carl Sapers, a professor at Harvard Design School and a specialist in architectural law, noted that a copyright exists from the time a work is created, and an author only has to register a copyright before filing a lawsuit.
Shine's charges, even if unfounded, reflect an all-too-common problem in academia: architecture professors stealing their students' work, he said. ''I've always been concerned about the exploitation of students," he said.
Henry Reeder, an architect at the Cambridge firm Architectural Resources Cambridge, said young architects often think they have ownership of an idea that's just that: an idea, not something they can copyright. ''That's a little bit of what I . . . feel this issue is all going to come out to," he said, adding that for the judge to continue the case, the similarities must be substantial.
Whatever comes of the dispute, the issue is now moot.
Childs's original design was cast aside after police raised security concerns. Childs has since unveiled a design for a glass-and-steel replacement, which looks more like one of the Twin Towers, with a 200-foot concrete base.
Still, even if the lawsuit has no effect on the Freedom Tower's ultimate design, Shine has decided to continue with the suit. He wants fair credit and compensation for his work, he said, and he argues his stand makes a point for young architects who may find themselves in a similar situation.
But he insists he never intended to delay or halt construction at Ground Zero, noting he never filed an injunction to stop building the disputed design, he said.
In an interview at a Brookline coffee shop, Shine explained how he came up with his design during a Yale seminar taught by Cesar Pelli, a renowned architect who required his students to create a unique skyscraper and present their ideas before a jury of top-flight architects.
He began designing a building with a twisting shape to the facade, because it has been a problem that has long challenged architects. Shine designed a diamond-shaped support structure for the building, he said, because such buildings can't rely on straight vertical columns.
After months of work drafting a detailed design, Shine's presentation went unusually well, he said. ''It's an intense, intense experience," he said. ''Your heart is pounding, you're exhausted and nervous, and [the jurors] aren't gentle. They can be quite cruel."
Shine's colleagues applauded his work, he said, and the young architect took joy in Childs's praise. ''It is a very beautiful shape," Childs told Shine, according to Retrospecta. ''You took the skin and developed it around the form -- great!"
It was the last time the two communicated -- that is, until Shine's lawyer contacted Childs last year about the familiar design of the Freedom Tower.
After working for several Boston firms over three years, Shine and his wife started their firm in late 2003. They've worked on mostly small projects, Shine said, including a home renovation in Brookline and a cafeteria in Cambridge.
For months, Shine said, he sought to negotiate with Skidmore for credit and compensation. He said he told officials at the firm that he would let the matter go, if they could prove Childs didn't copy his design.
Skidmore wouldn't negotiate, and they insisted Childs wasn't inspired by Shine's Olympic Tower. Shine filed suit in November 2004.
Discovery for the case begins soon.
E-mail Kennan Knudson at kennanknudson@yahoo.com. 