The Collegein Haus ,18th century building once housed the supreme

court of the kingdom of Russia, it is the memories and event that

happened in the past time in this citys atmosphere that give the site both
critical and essential value. The city centre decided to build a museum
next to this baroque building. There were 165 entries to the competition,
and Libeskind's entry was given the first prize.
I like to think its a natural evolution of a practice. I started with a single
building: the Jewish Museum Berlin. I never built a building before. But even
when I was doing what seemed to others to be abstract drawings; I never
thought of them as theoretical but as some thought of them as theoretical
but as somehow part of an investigation of architecture.
-Daniel Libeskind
Jewish cemetery always is overgrown with vegetation, all the tomb
stones uncarved and reserved for their families. The emptiness of these slabs
of marbles was the voids created. According to Libeskind the real inspiration
for the building was Einbahnstra ,One Way Street, a book from Walter
Benjamin, and to tell his story in the architectural language he made his own
alphabet. They are series of signs, and each of them represents an idea or a
concept. He was also inspired by
Veronandlungs Moses and Aron-a
work in three acts and with no
music beyond second act.
Libeskind wanted his building to
be a prolongation of this
unfinished music work. To show
his serious he wrote his proposal
and entitled it BETWEEN THE
LINES. According to Libeskind
(2001), the whole project is
between two main lines of thinking, organization and relationship. One is a
straight line but broken into many fragments, the other is a tortuous line but
continuing indefinitely.

CREATING NEW ALPHABET LIBESKIND, (2001)

The lines in all its variety govern the building, people of Berlin immediately
nicknamed The Blitz, lightning. In spite, the force of its expression the
movement is less arbitrary than it appears to be. In a time of putting the zigzag plan of the museum (broken star) into the site, it is not the concept that
orders what should happen to the site but it is only one simple element of the
site; a solo tree; that turned one wing of
this zig-zag plan.

THE JEWISH MUSEUM BERLIN STANDS NEXT TO THEORIGINAL BUILDING OF THE BERLIN
MUSEUM,THE FORMER COLLEGEIN HAUS. THE BAROQUE BUILDING WAS DESIGNED BY PHILIP
GERLACH IN 1735.

The lightning shape can be only seen from the sky from the lower down the
new construction is much more discrete .There is no intension in outshining
the baroque building. Nothing external links the two buildings. The front of
the building also looks like the back or any other side of the building.
The entrance to the Jewish Museum is through the baroque building. It is a
large entrance with untreated concrete with sharp angles, it opens on to a
staircase, instead of leading to upper floors like other museum staircases,
and it leads to an underground basement. The staircase is at very bottom of a
concrete well that without a functional level pierces the old building at every
level, so that the architect allows the viewer all floors up to the eaves.

THE ENTRANCE TO THE JEWISH MUSEUM THROUGH THE BAROQUE BUILDING AND THE
THREE MAJOR AXIS.

The Jewish Museum and the historic German monument are intertwined just
like the history of Germany and the history of Jews with a monstrous but
hidden violence. The concrete tower guards the entrance to the underground
area, it seems at first sight to be much simpler than broken like at the surface
building, yet this is the real heart of the corridors. The presence of the central
island means that only two can be seen at a time, it is impossible to have an
overall vision.

THREE UNDERGROUND ROADS SYMBOLIZE THREE PATHS IN THE HISTORY OF GERMAN JEWS.THE
FIRST LEADS TO THE DEAD END OF THE HOLOCAUST TOWER, THE SECOND TO THE GARDEN OF
EXILE,AND THE THIRD TO THE STAIRS OF CONTINUITY AND EXIBITION.

The three major axis here is the body in space, the three, major
experience in the German Judaism, continuity, exile and death these three
paths with branches harshly emphasized by the lines of light on the ceiling.
This is not a place for a stroll to walk through the museum but a testing
journey, an ordeal. Only one of these three corridor lead to the museum
galleries, it is the longest one that Libeskind called the axis if continuity.

The continuity of Jewish presence in Germany. It opens onto a staircase that

at first sight seems to be quite modest then a spectacular perspective reveals
itself. A straight line rising from the basement to the third floor. After
compressing the architect expands it. The sequence is classic, the effect is
guaranteed but Libeskind only freezes space in one direction, upwards. The
staircases no wider than the underground passage contained between two

walls that the great concrete beams stabilizing the structure seems to have
great difficulty in holding apart, this underlines the effect ,the difficulty of
making ones way along the path to return to the light of day. The axis of
continuity is no more than a passage leading to the upper floors at the
museum, the other two underground axis are exhibition areas.

THE AXIS OF CONTINUITY AND THE MAIN STAIR,REPRESENT THE CONTINUATION OF

BERLINS HISTORY

The cabins designed by the architect display nothing exceptional in the way
of art, just photos and childrens drawings such as every family ones except
that here the simplest of them are souvenirs exile and extermination.Two
fates to which these corridors lead with their sloping walls and direct flooring
lead. This one is called the axis of holocaust, it ends at a black door, and
behind that door is a concrete tower plunged into obscurity, the tower of the
holocaust.

CUTTING THROUGH THE MUSEUM IS THE VOID, AROUND WHICH THE EXIBITIONS ARE
ORGANIZED.SIXTY THERSHOLDS BRIDGE THE VOID.IN THE MEMORY VOID IS THE
INSTALLATION(FALLEN LEAVES)

Blank wall illuminated by slit that lets in the daylight that is the only opening
towards the outside. The tower of holocaust is indeed outside, the new
building connected to it only by subterranean axis. In treating it as a separate
volumes, the architect put it beyond the limits of museum experience in a
sort of symmetry with the hidden entrance tower crossing the axis of the
holocaust. The voids are refusal to give way to nostalgia, the negation of the
very idea of the museum, there is nothing to see through the slits, unless it is
the surprised faces of the visitors.
A single example of emptiness is accessible to the visitors, it is the principal
one, and it is the void of memory. Menashe Kadishman's contribution to the
Jewish Museum Berlin is the installation titled Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) in the
Memory Void, one of the empty spaces of the Libeskind Building. Over 10,000
open-mouthed faces coarsely cut from heavy, circular iron plates cover the

floor.Kadishman's installation, on loan from

Dieter and Si Rosenkranz, powerfully
compliments the spatial feel of the Voids. While
these serve as an architectural expression of
the irretrievable loss of the Jews murdered in
Europe, Menashe Kadishman's sculptures filling
them evoke painful recollections of the
innocent victims of yesterday, today, and
tomorrow.
The third axis is that a exile, this is the scenario
of leaving of Germany that leads right outside
into the open air. It is hanging garden perhaps
in illusion to the exile in Babylon but these trees planted in 49 concrete pillars
are also simply an image of uprooting exile seen as the loss of a reference
point the garden, leaning pillars that destabilized and nearly and unbalances
the visitor in fact this is a perfect square, the only place in museum with strict
right angles but the architect has tipped it to create a double 10 degree slope
so that when walking through the pillars the pitch changes at every turn, like
the tower of holocaust the garden is a dead end contrary to its appearance, it
is completely cut off from the outside by dry moat.

DEMONSTRATE HOW THE PERFECT SQUARE AND PILLAR ON IT HAS BEEN TIPPED DOWN
TO MAKE A DOUBLE SLOPE TO ACHIEVE THE CONCEPT.

Exile is also imprisonment there is no other way out than to return to the
underground axis. The old and the new buildings, the towers of the holocaust
and the garden of exile are linked by a hidden network of communications
and directions but on the surface architects have deliberately treated them
as independent elements.

OLEASTER GROWS ON TOP OF THE FORTY-NINE CONCRETE PILLARS.FORTY EIGHT

PILLARS,REPRESENTING THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL,ARE FILLED WITH THE SOIL OF BERLIN;THE
FORTY NINTH PILLAR IS FILLED WITH THE SOIL OF ISRAEL.

The visible concrete at the tower of the holocaust and the pillars in the
garden exile a quite distinct from the main building which is completely
covered in zinc. Gashes, cuts, sky the opening in the building break with all
system of composition modern or traditional. It is the result of the super

imposition of two distinct schemes ,the first dysfunctional for the offices is on
the top floor in the service areas for which the architect has created simple
windows even if he has given them such particular shapes that they had to
be made by manufacture and windscreens. Even the linear openings that
stripe the body of the building, a part of scheme that owns nothing to
architecture. To make them Libeskind drew lines on the plan of Berlin to link
the addresses real or imaginary of emblematic figures and German Judaism
and projected the resulting diagram.

THE ZINC EXTERIOR IS INCISED WITH THAT REFER TO THE STAR OF DAVID.THE POSITIONING OF
THE WINDOWS FOLLOW A MATRIX THAT EXPRESSES THE LINK BETWEEN JEWISH TRADITION AND
GERMAN CULTURE BY PLOTTING THE ADRESSES OF PROMINENT JEWISH AND GERMAN CITIZENS ON
A MAP OF PREWAR BERLIN.

The effect of these openings have on the inside of the buildings is equally
astonishing except these are the galleries of the museum, posing the
problem of how to hang things on the wall that look like something out of the
decor of the 20s German expressionist film. There was nothing to display yet
in 1999 the museum was opened to the visitors, 350,000 people visited the
empty museum in two years, many of them thought it was better like that ,it
was architecture that was on display.
In September 2001, the museum
inaugurated with a collection of
more than 4,000 objects. All
bearing witness of two thousand
years and Jewish presence in
Germany. Interiors decorator were
called from Munich and they
rounded of the angles, covered
the openings, yet something of
architecture stood firm, the
comforting continuity of the museum route was disturbed several times by
the these bare black blocks with the exhibition stops. These are the concrete
towers that traverse the building at all levels. There are six of them in
different shapes.
The only lighting is through skylights, there is nothing in them, there i8s
no way into them, the architect call them the voids, they are the incarnation
of the final figure in German Judaism, absence. There is no hint of these
empty towers from the outside, only the skylight makes a hint on the roof
cutting through the zig-zag.

THE SIX VOIDS CONNECTING THE STARING AND THE END OF THE BUILDING

CONCEPTUAL DIAGRAMS