MINORU YAMASAKI was an unlikely choice for lead architect of the World Trade Center megadevelopment. He was not one of the troika of Internationalist corporate architects: Gordon Bunshaft, Wallace K. Harrison, and Edward Durell Stone (before his apostasy); he was best known for modestly scaled, sculptural buildings, such as his 30-story Reynolds Building in Detroit (1958); and he was morbidly afraid of heights. The design he delivered was even more unusual—not a glass slab at all, but twin towers, supported by external columns, that function as minimalist sculpture.