DANIEL LIBESKIND

“To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it.”
Born : May 12, 1946 Poland

Nationality : Polish American

noted Buildings : Jewish Museum Berlin

Imperial War Museum North

Contemporary Jewish Museum

Royal Ontario Museum

(expansion)

One World Trade Center (2002)

Libeskind was the second child of Dora and Nachman
Libeskind, both Polish Jews and Holocaust survivors.

As a young child, Libeskind learned to play the accordi-

on and quickly became a virtuoso, performing on Pol-
ish television at the age of seven.

He attended the Bronx High School of Science and was

never really into architecture.

The print shop where his father worked was on Stone

Street in Lower Manhattan, and Libeskind watched the
original World Trade Center being built in the 1960s.

Libeskind met Nina Lewis, his future wife and business

partner in 1966 and They married a few years later.
instead of a traditional honeymoon, traveled across
the United States visiting Frank Lloyd Wright buildings
on a Cooper Union fellowship.

Libeskind briefly worked as an apprentice to architect

Richard Meier at the age of 22.

In 1970, he received his professional architectural de-

gree at 24 from the Cooper Union for the Advancement
of Science and Art.

he also received a postgraduate degree in History and

Theory of Architecture at the School of Comparative
Studies at the University of Essex in 1972.

The same year, he was hired to work at Peter Eisenman’s

New York Institute for Architecture and Urban Stud-
ies, but he quit almost immediately.
Libeskind began his career as an architectural theo-
rist and professor, holding positions at various insti-
tutions around the world.

he worked as the Director of the Architecture Depart-

ment at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills,
Michigan.

His practical architectural career began at the arge

of 34, where he submitted to architectural competi-
tions and also founded and directed Architecture In-
termundium, Institute for Architecture & Urbanism.

Libeskind won his first design competition for housing

in West Berlin, but the Berlin Wall fell shortly there-
after and the project was cancelled.

he completed his first building at the age of 52, with

the opening of the Felix Nussbaum Haus in Osnabruck,
Germany in 1998.

he won the first four project competitions he entered

including the Jewish Museum Berlin in 1989, which be-
came the first museum dedicated to the Holocaust in
WWII and opened to the public in 2001 with interna-
tional acclaim.
famous for being selected by the Lower Manhattan De-
velopment Corporation to oversee the rebuilding of
the World Trade Center.

He titled his concept for the site Memory Foundations.

the first architect to win the Hiroshima Art Prize,

awarded to an artist whose work promotes interna-
tional understanding and peace.

Many of his projects look at the deep cultural connec-

tions between memory and architecture.

Libeskind’s design projects also include sculpture.

designed opera sets for productions such as the Nor-

wegian National Theatre’s The Architect and Saarlän-
disches Staatstheater’s Tristan und Isolde.

designed the sets and costumes for Intolleranza by Lui-

gi Nono and for a production of Messiaen’s Saint Fran-
cis of Assisi by Deutsche Oper Berlin.

has also written free verse prose, included in his book

Fishing from the Pavement
 jewish museum berlin
The original Jewish Museum in Berlin was established in
1933, but it wasn’t open very long before it was closed
during Nazi rule in 1938.

Unfortunately, the museum remained vacant until

1975 when a Jewish cultural group vowed to reopen
the museum attempting to bring a Jewish presence back
to Berlin.

In 1988 Daniel Libeskind` design was chosen, as his de-

sign was the only project that implemented a radical,
formal design as a conceptually expressive tool to rep-
resent the Jewish lifestyle before, during, and after the
Holocaust.

the Museum finally opened in 2001 (completed in 1999)

and did establish a Jewish presence embedded cultural-
ly and socially in Berlin.
 CONCEPT

Libeskind wanted to express feelings of absence, empti-

ness, and invisibility – expressions of disappearance of
the Jewish Culture.

It was the act of using architecture as a means of nar-

rative and emotion providing visitors with an experi-
ence of the effects of the Holocaust on both the Jew-
ish culture and the city of Berlin.

The project begins to take its form from an abstracted

Jewish Star of David that is stretched around the site
and its context.

The form is established through a process of connect-

ing lines between locations of historical events that
provide structure for the building resulting in a lit-
eral extrusion of those lines into a “zig-zag” building
form.
Even though Libeskind’s extenstion appears as its own
separate building, there is no formal exterior entrance
to the building.

In order to enter the new museum extension one must

enter from the original Baroque museum in an under-
ground corridor.

A visitor must endure the anxiety of hiding and losing

the sense of direction before coming to a cross roads
of three routes.

The three routes present opportunities to witness the

Jewish experience through the continuity with German
history, emigration from Germany, and the Holocaust.

Libeskind creates a promenade that follows the “zig-

zag” formation of the building for visitors to walk
through and experience the spaces within.
From the exterior, the interior looks as if it will be
similar to the exterior perimeter; however, the interi-
or spaces are extremely complex.

Libeskind’s formulated promenade leads people through

galleries, empty spaces, and dead ends.

A significant portion o f the extension is void of win-

dows and difference in materiality.

The interior is composed of reinforced concrete which

reinforces the moments of the empty spaces and dead
ends where only a sliver of light is entering the space.

It is a symbolic gesture by Libeskind for visitors to ex-

perience what the Jewish people during WWII felt, such
that even in the darkest moments where you feel like
you will never escape, a small trace of light restores
hope.
One of the most emotional and powerful spaces in the
building is a 66’ tall void that runs through the entire
building.

The concrete walls add a cold, overwhelming atmo-

sphere to the space where the only light emanates from
a small slit at the top of the space.

The ground is covered in 10,000 coarse iron faces.

A symbol of those lost during the Holocaust; the build-

ing is less of a museum but an experience depicting what
most cannot understand.

Libeskind’s extension leads out into the Garden of Exile

where once again the visitors feel lost among 49 tall
concrete pillars that are covered with plants.

The overbearing pillars make one lost and confused,

but once looking up to an open sky there is a moment
of exaltation.
“The Jewish Museum is conceived as an emblem in which the Invisible and the Visible are the
structural features which have been gathered in this space of Berlin and laid bare in an archi-
tecture where the unnamed remains the name which keeps still.”

- Daniel Libeskind
imperial war museum north

Completed in 2001, the Imperial War Museum North

(IWMN) is located in Manchester, England and tells
the story of how war has affected the lives of British
and Commonwealth citizens since 1914.

Known for the awe inspiring piece of architecture

known as the Jewish Museum Berlin, this museum was
also designed by Studio Daniel Libeskind and holds its
own share of acknowledgements having been named
one of the top 10 buildings of the last century (2008)
and one of the top 3 Large Visitor Attractions in En-
gland (2007).
 CONCEPT
The design concept is that of a globe which has been
shattered into fragments and then reassembled.

The three fragments interlock and join at different

angles, each representing a different element, earth,
air, and water.

These three shards represent conflicts that have been

fought by men and women by land, sky, and sea.

The Earth shard forms the museum space, signifying the

open, earthly realm of conflict and war.

The Air shard serves as a dramatic entry with project-

ed images, observatories and education spaces showing
a more intangible and emotional side to war.

Finally, the Water shard forms the platform for view-

ing the Canal, with a restaurant, café, deck and per-
formance space.
Although the exhibits and central space of the building
are located in the Earth shard, that plane is relatively
flat, remaining close to the surface, like its intended
reference should suggest, but allows the Air shard to
become the more dominant feature from an exterior
perspective.

The Air shard is 55m high, providing views of the Man-

chester skyline, while also leaving the viewers exposed
to the elements.

The angular and shard like nature of the exterior is

only emphasized on the interior by the elaborate steel
truss and bracing as well as the lights and openings.

The experience of walking through this building real-

ly echoes the subject matter, as the architect refuses
to overly romanticize war and conflict, leaving the
majority of the structure raw and unadorned, which
makes the true reasons and intention of the museum
to come through.
The site that IWM North stands on today is where the
Hovis Grain Silos once stood before they were bombed
and burnt down in the Second World War.

the building to be a symbol of the effects of war, so

he came up with the concept of a globe shattered into
three pieces – and though it’s been put back together,
it will never be the same again.

used a variety of techniques within the architecture

to achieve this. The route into the museum itself is con-
fusing, and the curves of the shattered globe that make
up the outline of the building also continue inside, af-
fecting how the visitor moves around the museum.

visitors enter they have to follow a pathway through

the AirShard that goes back on itself – creating a feel-
ing of disorientation. To increase the feeling of con-
fusion, the AirShard is neither an outdoor or indoor
space, and while it offers some shelter, it’s also exposed
to the elements.

The floor of the Main Exhibition Space also slopes down

by about eight feet. This is both to mimic the curvature
of the Earth and to add to the experience of disorien-
tation.
THANK YOU