IN SEPTEMBER 2001, New York developer Donald Trump was dreaming of building the world's tallest skyscraper, a 2,000-foot mega-tower that would return the record to America from Malaysia, where it had been lost, though not without controversy, to the twin Petronas Towers. Trump's people met in Chicago with architects from the legendary firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which had designed the magnificent John Hancock Center in that city, with its bridge-like exoskeletal steel ribs, and the Sears Tower, which had been dethroned by Petronas in 1996.