The new world trade center is symbolic.

The developer of the new World Trade Center unveiled the designs this morning for three skyscrapers at ground zero, which in their gargantuan scale would reshape the New York skyline.

The designs offered the most comprehensive picture to date of what the finished complex might -- just might -- look like six years from now. Above, the Freedom Tower is to the left of Towers 2, 3 and 4.

Each building has a different architect — Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, both of London, and Fumihiko Maki of Tokyo — and the result is entirely unlike the monolithic uniformity of the original trade center.

... Lord Foster’s Tower 2, with a rooftop of four enormous diamonds steeply inclined toward the memorial below, would be as high as the Empire State Building. Tower 3 by Lord Rogers, framed boldly by an exoskeletal framework of diagonal beams, would reach a pinnacle of 1,255 feet at its corner antennas. Even the smallest and subtlest building among them, Mr. Maki’s Tower 4, would be taller than the Citigroup Center in midtown.

You may recall that the original Freedom Tower design had to be scrapped (because the NYPD thought it was too susceptible to attack) and redesigned with a concrete base. Now the Daily News' I-Team takes up concerns law enforcement officials have with "security weaknesses" in the new towers at World Trade Center.

The three new towers have too much glass and are "positioned too closely to city streets, increasing their vulnerability to attack." Also, it's expected that daily inspection of "some 2,000 delivery trucks and sightseeing buses" will be difficult and the "vehicle security center...hasn't been fully designed and relies on vehicle inspection technology that hasn't even been developed yet."

Various state officials involved with the plan say safety concerns are top of mind and the technology will be in place when the buildings are completed. When the NYPD was interviewed, the comment was, "The NYPD has been in talks with the Port Authority, but we don't disclose any information about possible security vulnerabilities for obvious reasons."

The News also remarks that the buildings don't "meet Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security blast standards," which skyscrapers rarely follow but are what embassies are built to. It would be unrealistic to think of the redeveloped World Trade Center as entirely impenetrable, but given its symbolic importance and history of two attacks, the article inevitably raises a form versus function debate and questions about whether anything should have been built there after the first WTC fell.

You can see developer Larry Silverstein's WTC vision here and FEMA has a library of documents, "Building Design for Homeland Security," which shows different methodologies for determining risk.