Philip Kennicott, the "Washington Post" culture critic, praised the design: "Gehry has produced a design that inverts several of the sacred hierarchies of the classical memorial, emphasizing ideas of domesticity and interiority rather than masculine power and external display. He has 're-gendered' the vocabulary of memorialization, giving it new life and vitality." Former member of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts Witold Rybczynski, whose critique of the memorial appeared in "The New York Times", praised the concept of the roofless building and defended the size of the tapestries: "Mr. Gehry and his collaborators have developed hand-weaving techniques so that the screens really do resemble tapestries. Having seen full-size mock-ups of the screens on the site, I am convinced that their size will not be out of scale with the surroundings." David Childs, former chair of both the NCPC and U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, wrote to Congress in support of the design.