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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.
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".
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.
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.