After the New York Times rejected his op-ed on the new construction, the artist launched a guerrilla-style swipe at both

Banksy's artworks have been coming down almost as quickly as they have been going up. Image courtesy of the artist.

A work of art offered by Banksy to his temporary home in New York is a scathing attack on the new World Trade Center – "that building is a disaster. Well no, disasters are interesting" – and a sideswipe at the New York Times for refusing to print his view.

During a month as the city's unofficial artist in residence, Banksy has been teasing his fans and tormenting the authorities with a daily revelation on his website of his latest gift to the city.

His latest shows a wall stencilled with the words "this site contains blocked messages", over a piece mocked up in the New York Times's distinctive typeface, headed "The biggest eyesore in New York is not the graffiti, argues Banksy, it's under construction at ground zero."

He explains: "Today's piece was going to be an op-ed column in the New York Times. But they declined to publish what I supplied. Which was this …"

The piece – illustrated with a silhouetted skyscraper overprinted in red with "replace with better artwork" – savages the new building as "a betrayal of everyone who lost their lives on September 11th because it so clearly proclaims the terrorists won …

"One World Trade Center is a non-event. It's vanilla. It looks like something they would build in Canada …"

"The attacks of September 11th were an attack on all of us and we will live out our lives in their shadow. But it's also how we react to adversity that defines us. And the response? 104 floors of compromise?"

The project to replace the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which were destroyed in terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, has been controversial from the start: some felt that the area – some of the most valuable commercial space in the world – should have been left empty as a memorial. An international design competition for the site was won by the renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, but his plans were drastically altered during the construction process.

Banksy wrote that the building, which is nearing completion, declares that the city's glory days are over. "You currently have under construction a one thousand foot tall sign that reads, 'New York – we lost our nerve'."

A spokesperson for the New York Times, Eileen Murphy, told the New York Post that the piece Banksy has published was not quite the same as the one he submitted to them. "We couldn't agree on either it or the art that accompanied it and so it was rejected," she said.

> via TheGuardian