ARCHITECT DANIEL LIBESKIND:

An international figure in architectural practice and urban design, Daniel Libeskind is well known
for introducing a new critical discourse on architecture and for his multidisciplinary approach.
His practice extends from building major cultural and commercial institutionsincluding museums
and concert hallsto convention centers, universities, housing, hotels, shopping centers, and
residential work. He also designs opera sets and maintains an object design studio.
Born to Holocaust survivors in postwar Poland in 1946, Libeskind became an American citizen in
1965.
He studied music in Israel (on an America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship) and in New York,
becoming a virtuoso performer.
He left music to study architecture, receiving his professional architectural degree in 1970 from
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City.
He received a postgraduate degree in History and Theory of Architecture at the School of
Comparative Studies at Essex University (UK) in 1972.

Buildings by Daniel Libeskind

Jewish Museum Berlin, "Between the Lines," Berlin, Germany, 19891999.
Felix Nussbaum Haus, "Museum ohne Ausgang," Osnabrck, Germany, 19951999.
Danish Jewish Museum, "Mitzvah," Copenhagen, Denmark, 19962003.
Extension to the Victoria & Albert Museum, "The Spiral," London, England, 19962006.
Imperial War Museum North, "Earth Time," Manchester, England, 19972002.
Studio Weil, Private gallery for Barbara Weil, Port d'Andratx, Mallorca, Spain, 19982003.
Jewish Museum San Francisco, "L'Chai'm: To Life," San Francisco, CA, 19982005.
Maurice Wohl Convention Centre, Bar-Ilan, "The Book and the Wall," Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, Israel,
20002004.
Extension to the Denver Art Museum, "The Eye and the Wing," Denver, CO, 20002005.
London Metropolitan University Post-Graduate Centre, "Orion," London, England, 20012003.
World Trade Center Site Plan, "Memory Foundations," New York, NY, 2002.

Design philosophy:

"Libeskind is usually described as a 'deconstructivist'an architect who takes the basic rectangle of
a building, breaks it up on the drawing board and then reassembles the pieces in a much different
way.

 "Libeskind collects ideas about the social and historical context of a project, mixes in his own
thoughts, and transforms it all into a physical structure."
His ability to create a building that has a practical purpose as well as a deep symbolic meaning.
Libeskind's has a unique ability to take lofty ideas and powerful emotions and translate them into
the physical forms of buildings.
His style constitutes a recognizable "brand". The brand consists of sharp, angular, metallic shards,
with gravity-defying walls, and conveys the unmistakable thrill of transgression.
In Libeskind's buildings speak above all of despair, exile, and annihilation, there is a deliberate
"geometry of death" (predominates in his forms) at work -- one so powerfully present that it
threatens to suffocate any tokens of life that dare occupy its spaces. At the same time we see in
those buildings speak of regeneration, a corresponding "geometry of life".

THE JEWISH MUSEUM BERLIN

The Jewish Museum Berlin, which opened to the public in 2001, exhibits the social, political and cultural
history of the Jews in Germany from the 4th century to the present.
The museum explicitly presents and integrates, for the first time in postwar Germany, the repercussions
of the Holocaust.
The new extension is housed on the site of the original Prussian Court of Justice building which was
completed in 1735 and renovated in the 1960s to become a museum for the city of Berlin.
The building is very distinctive from other museums, since it does not respond to any functional
requirements, but is rather constructed to create spaces that tell the story of the Jewish people in
Germany. The museum itself is a work of art, blurring the lines between architecture and sculpture.
The view from above is that of a large zig-zag line, which earned it the nickname "blitz", German word for
thunderbolt.
The main building is covered with zinc plating, and the windows are just lines that cross the surface in a
random fashion. These lines were created from connecting different sites in a Berlin map that are
important to Jewish history.
The facades are disrupted by gashes - windows that look like scars. Its angular shape and sharp edges give
it an almost violent appearance, though the surrounding gardens ensure the site is not entirely devoid of life.
This building has no access of any kind from the street
The new design, which was created a year before the Berlin Wall came down was based on three
conception that formed the museums foundation:
First, the impossibility of understanding the history of Berlin without understanding the enormous
intellectual, economic and cultural contribution made by the Jewish citizens of Berlin.

 Second, the necessity to integrate physically and spiritually the meaning of the Holocaust into the
consciousness and memory of the city of Berlin.
Third, that only through the acknowledgement and incorporation of this erasure and void of Jewish life
in Berlin, can the history of Berlin and Europe have a human future.
The entrance is through the Baroque Kollegienhaus and then into a dramatic entry Void by a stair, which
descends under the existing building foundations, crisscrosses underground, and materializes itself as an
independent building on the outside.
The existing building is tied to the extension underground, preserving the contradictory autonomy of both
the old building
And the new building on the surface, while binding the two together in the depth of time and space.
The descent leads to three underground axial routes, each of which tells a different story.
1.The first, and longest, traces a path leading to the Stair of Continuity, then up to and through the exhibition
spaces of the museum, emphasizing the continuum of history.
2.The second leads out of the building and into the Garden of Exile and Emigration, remembering those who
were forced to leave Berlin.
3.The third leads to a dead end the Holocaust Void. The Holocaust Void cuts through the zigzagging plan
of the new building and creates a space that embodies absence. It is a straight line whose impenetrability
becomes the central focus around which exhibitions are organized.
In order to move from one side of the museum to the other, visitors must cross one of the 60 bridges that
open onto this void.
The basic form is is a zizag with a number of voids. These voids are 5 stories high. As visitors follow the zig
zag pattern through the museum as dictated by the layout of the building they are repeatedly confronted by
these voids.
The voids are accessible nowhere and appear to be meaningless or senseless. They are just cold gloomy
depths. The flowing movement breaks down.
According to the Jewish Museum Berlin, "The line of Voids, a series of empty rooms ... expresses the
emptiness remaining in Europe after the banishment and murder of its Jews during World War II.
The Voids stand for the deported and exiled masses, and for the generations that were never born. They
make their absence visible
The Axis of Exile, which leads to an exterior square courtyard, composed of concrete columns and that has
been tilted in one of its corners, called The Garden of Exile; and The Axis of Continuity, that goes through the
other two hallways, representing the permanence of Jews in Germany in spite of the Holocaust and the
Exile.

FREEDOM TOWER, NEW YORK:

After completing the Jewish Museum Berlin, Libeskind received important commissions to design buildings
all over the world, accomplishment that brought Libeskind to the attention of millions in the United States
and elsewhere was his victory in the contest to become the master site planner of the new development at
the World Trade Center site, known as Ground Zero, in New York City.
Competing against many of the world's most accomplished architects, Libeskind conceived a design that
incorporated, in its every aspect, the significance of the tragedy that took place at that site on September
11, 2001, when terrorists crashed two jetliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Since it was felt that a strong connection to Libeskind's design, and he was declared the winner in
February 2003.
Libeskind plan, titled Memory Foundations, included a number of features, all interconnected and
serving to express his vision of the site as a tribute to the victims of 9/11 and as a landmark architectural
project for New York and the entire United States.
His original design designated large areas of open space, including the Park of Heroes as a tribute to those
police, fire fighters, and rescue workers who lost their lives on 9/11.
Another open space was called the Wedge of Light, a triangular area that, every September 11, would be
bathed in natural light, unobscured by shadows from the surrounding buildings, between 8:46 A.M. , when
the first plane struck one of the twin towers, and 10:28 A.M. , when the second tower collapsed.
Libeskind's design specified that the seventy-foot-deep "footprints," or foundations, of the collapsed
towerswhere hundreds worked for many months after September 11, 2001, removing debris and
searching for remainswould be left intact as sunken memorial space.
Libeskind also wanted to leave standing the slurry walls, which made up part of the foundation of the
twin towers, the only part of those buildings to survive the collapse.
His concept included a series of buildings to hold offices, residences, a performing arts center, and
shopping centers; the tallest building was to be 1,776 feet, a number chosen by Libeskind to recall the year
the United States gained independence from Britain. The shape of the building, which was to be topped by
a tall spire, would echo that of the nearby Statue of Liberty.

 The World Trade Center development added a new dimension to this complexity: for the families of the
victims of 9/11, and for many others as well, the ground at this site is sacred, and the process for developing
that land is charged with strong opinions and deeply felt emotions.