Daniel Libeskind

ARCHITECT

portrait of a

mark genest

professional practice march 14, 2005

DANIEL LIBESKIND: PORTRAIT OF A 21st CENTURY ARCHITECT

Reasons to Design
You can always do art in architecture, but you cant do architecture in art. You get two sh with the same hook. 1

Daniel Libeskind would not describe his childhood as unusual by any means. He was born in 1949 in Poland, the child to two Jewish holocaust survivors. He was a child prodigy in music right from the start, competing at the tender age of 11 on the accordion with the likes of Itzhak Perlman and being awarded accolades by Isaac Stern. Unable to play the piano because his parents were afraid that it would incite antiSemitism, his accordion dreams were cut short due to the fact that it was not an instrument highly regarded in music circles. Instead, he decided to be an artist, but he credits his mother, who he describes often with love and admiration, as directing him into architecture. My brilliant and fearless mother was a profound inuence on my life. We are our parents children, and as someone who was born in the post-Holocaust world to parents who were both survivors, I bring that history to bear on my work. 2 Being a child of survivors of such a culturally traumatic event shaped Daniels inuences and choices in his early work. As an immigrant, one whose youth often felt displaced, Ive sought to create a different architecture, one that reects an understanding of history after world catastrophes. 3 Daniel started his architectural career not in practice, but as an admired academic theorist and professor. He spent a great deal of time writing, researching and teaching, preferring to explore abstract architectural ideas in drawings only. Libeskind took cubism as a point of departure in his early work. (FIGS.1,2&3)

Libeskinds early drawings are clues to his highly personal approach to architecture. Difficult to interpret at first, second and third attempts, they represent a search for that which ultimately cannot be spoken about, cannot be described. 4

In fact, he did not actually produce a building until his mid forties, which was the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Osnabruck (FIG.4).

The great modernist architects of the twentieth century- Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Erich Mendelssohn- reveled in ignoring it, snapping the bonds to the past. Rather, they felt their role was to impose their vision on the world, and they did that brilliantly, if not always successfully. A Mies building is a Mies building whether it is built in Berlin or Havana. But after the disastrous movements of the twentieth century, how can anyone embrace any ism- be it modernism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, communism, or fundamentalism? Architecture is not, and should not be, about labels. 6

Labeled a deconstructivist in the 1980s with the likes of Zaha Hadid, Frank O. Gehry, and Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind has always been fascinated with taking apart traditional architectural forms and then rearranging them in a different way. It is the experience right after the catastrophe that Daniel is interested in. He describes it as the void, that place of complete and utter emptiness that is created after a community is destroyed, individual rights are trampled, and society has to rebuild itself from the rubble into a new sense of meaning and presence (FIG.5). As he describes it, a building is infused with energy and life, and also is symbiotically integrated into the people who use the building everyday. Destroying a building is comparable to destroying part of the community and the individuals within that community. Therefore, when an architect builds, he/she should be intimately aware of this life force. Buildings have hearts and souls, just as cities do. We can feel the memory in a building, sense the spiritual and cultural longing it evokes. 5 Embracing an antiseptic reality does not make sense to Libeskind. Pretending that buildings are neutral is not what he considers an appropriate approach in a 21st century architectural reality.

Indeed it should not be about labels, but this harsh criticism may stem from Libeskinds past experiences with the darkness of some 20th century isms. It does not however, mean that international styles should not be embraced. Daniel believes in an architecture based on democratic ideals, and it could be architecture of any kind and anywhere. He also believes that architecture should have a deeper, more spiritual underlying meaning, which hopefully will trickle into its physical presence. In this, he may have less in common with the high modernists as with the late Gothic and early Renaissance architectural masters, whose reverence for the sacred rather than the profane may have inspired them to create some of the greatest architecture the world has ever seen- works that still inspire a sense of wonder hundreds of years later. Living in a building means, and should mean, looking ever forward toward the future, but remembering and cherishing the past: it is this very past and our awareness of it in the present, that can help dene our future.

Architecture is a Business
The architect should be both an artist and a salesman. Hopefully, he is a better artist than he is a salesman. 7

Architecture is not the same as the other arts. Architects are intimately connected to business and industry in a way art, music and the performing arts are not. Unlike artists or philosophers or writers, architects are totally dependent on others- others with money, and lots of it, because its expensive to put up a building, even a modest one. 8 In fact, this connection to business and industry is more evident today than at any other time in architectural history. New methods of building using structurally superior materials, along with the advent of computer modeling and testing, has allowed a whole new generation of architects to realize ideas that would never otherwise have seen the light of day. 3

Even Libeskind admits his designs would have a hard time being built one hundred or even fty years ago (FIG.6). Architects are also in an ever more precarious position to justify their designs in a global market for ideas that is as much advertising as it is building. [So] much of what you have to do in architecture is performance. Not just the way you have to present your ideas. But the way the buildings themselves perform. 9 Sometimes this can have the adverse affect of creating architecture too focused on the economic and practical, with not enough attention paid to the transcendent. He believes that a lot of architecture is supercial and void of deep, personal and cultural meaning. Daniel Libeskind is adept at selling his ideas, and ultimately, his buildings because his passion, rigor and belief in his designs create an multi-layered bond to his work that resonates when he speaks about them. If asked, any design can be summed up in a few short, poignant sentences, sometimes in entire lecture discourses, sometimes with a spiritual fervor, sometimes with an academic avor. He is an emotional person, and writes and speaks passionately about architecture from a spiritual connection, relating his design visions to something beyond our everyday explanation.
Architecture has always been done for the people with money, with power. But how do you do architecture which is responsive to the public? Thats what Im interested in - not style categories, or the networking of power groups. Its about giving something enlightened back to the public. 10

specically because of his ability to relate architecture in a more emotional and reverential way that connects intimately with the specic memory each building is dedicated to and the average people visiting and using it. In retrospect, perhaps it is also the shear success of these building proposals and nal designs that have strengthened his reasons for architecture.

An Informality of Working Environments

Today, Studio Libeskind prefers an informal, open working environment, one that seems to be increasingly fashionable in architectural environments of the 21st century. Ever since I began architecture, I had abhorrence to conventional architecture ofces. There was something about the atmosphere of redundancy, routine and production that made me allergic to all forms of specialization and socalled professionalism. 11 Berlin ofces of the time were very formal and neat with identical computers and chairs and desk lamps. His ofce by contrast had no formal reception area, was full of mismatched chairs, cardboard and wooden models, computer parts of various styles and 4

Proof of this can be seen in the Holocaust Museum in Berlin (FIG. 7), the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco (FIG. 8), the Imperial War Museum in Manchester (FIG. 9), and the Freedom Tower Plan for New York City (FIG. 10), all of which have been granted to him

congurations, and lots of young people. He has carried this informality into his new New York ofce of Studio Libeskind, consisting of 50 people, with another main ofce in Zurich, Switzerland consisting of 15, and site ofces in San Francisco, Denver, Bern, Boston, Toronto, Hong Kong, and Tel Aviv. Every project develops with a consistent core team, with major decisions being made by Daniel Libeskind, principle design architect, and the core team working closely with cost estimators and quantity surveyors to make sure the building is completed on time and on budget. There is an open atmosphere to the physical layout of the ofce, allowing a consistent transference of ideas in the ofce through daily development meetings and informal discourse.

Bibliography
Adams, Nicholas. Studio Daniel Libeskind Skews Walls and Slants Floors in a Former Boathouse to Heighten the Experience of the DANISH JEWISH MUSEUM in Copenhagen. Architectural Record 192, no. 10 (2004): 140. Bennett, Paul. Libeskind, Hadid, Isozaki Designing Towers in a Growing Milan. Architectural Record 192, no. 10 (2004): 34. Brown, Bay. Studio Daniel Libeskind with Leigh and Orange Architects: City University of Hong Kong Creative Media Center, Hong Kong. Architect 93, no. 12 (2004): 70-70. designboom. Daniel Libeskind. in designboom [database online]. [cited 2005]. Available from http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ libeskind.html. Glancey, Jonathan. Star Man. in Guardian Unlimited [database online]. Monday January 22, 2001 [cited 2005]. Available from http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/feature/0,1169,671029,00. html. KmtSpace. Daniel Libeskind: : Complex Structural Imagery. in African Art and Architecture [database online]. [cited 2005]. Available from http://www.kmtspace.com/kmt/libeskind.htm. Lazere, Arthur. Perfect Acts of Architecture in culturevulture.net [database online]. March 5, 2002 [cited 2005]. Available from http://www. culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/PerfectActs.htm. Libeskind, Daniel. Breaking Ground. New York: Riverhead Books, 2004. Libeskind, Daniel. Daniel Libeskind. in Studio Libeskind [database online]. [cited 2005]. Available from http://www.daniel-libeskind. com/. Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. World Trade Center Site Overview. in Lower Manhattan Development Corporation [database online]. [cited 2005]. Available from http:// www.renewnyc.com/plan_des_dev/wtc_site/ Sept2003Overview.asp. Lubell, Sam. Wasnt it Inevitable? Libeskind Sues Silverstein. Architectural Record 192, no. 8 (2004): 24. Lubell, Sam. Daniel Libeskind: Is His Plan Still Around? Architectural Record 192, no. 4 (2004): 34. Pearman, Hugh. Daniel Libeskind Interview. in Hugh Pearman [database online]. [cited 2005]. Available from http://www.hughpearman.com/ articles2/libeskind.html.

In the end, the message Daniel Libeskind seems to leave in his discourses, writings and buildings, is that architecture can and should be more individual and responsible than at any other time in its history of practice. The architect should not be elitist, authoritarian, or conformist, and should be honest not to mask these attributes in a perceived cloak of individuality; one should honestly strive for a way to be unique and true to ideals, while at the same time knowing that practicing in a global world will never be black and white. Architects should become more enmeshed in enriching the urban fabric not only at the economic level, but at the layers of culture, spirit, and social response by considering the deep levels of meaning in the hearts of their buildings. They must accept the sacred and the profane, the light and the dark, and seek to balance them in ways that respect the body and the soul. Architecture as a discipline in the 21st century will help direct society only when architects embrace society as it has been, and society as it is now, with all its often messy complexities. To become intimately involved in it, they may then be able to make society what it could be.

(Endnotes) 1 Daniel Libeskind, Breaking Ground, 12. 2 Daniel Libeskind, Breaking Ground, 12. 3 Daniel Libeskind, Breaking Ground, 12. 4 Johnathan Glancey, The Guardian Unlimited, Star Man, Jan. 22, 2001. 5 Daniel Libeskind, Breaking Ground, 13. 6 Daniel Libeskind, Breaking Ground, 42-43. 7 Brian MacKay Lyons, paraphrased from interview conducted Jan. 20, 2005. 8 Daniel Libeskind, Breaking Ground, 19. 9 Hugh Pearman, Daniel Libeskind Interview. 10 Hugh Pearman, Daniel Libeskind Interview.
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Daniel Libeskind, www.daniel-libeskind.com.