Life:
- Born in post war Poland in 1946, Mr. Libeskind became an American citizen in 1965
- He studied music in Israel 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.
- Daniel Libeskind established his architectural office in Berlin, Germany in 1989. Upon winning the World Trade Center design competition, in February 2003, Studio Daniel Libeskind moved its headquarters to New York City. The office is now headquartered two blocks south of the original World Trade Center Site.
Major Projects:
- Glass Courtyard, Berlin
- West side Shopping Center, Switzerland
- Tangent, South Korea
- Media Center, HongKong
Philosophy:
- Daniel Libeskind was born in 1946 – just after the Second World War, – in Lodz, Poland.
- His parents were among the few Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, while most of his extended family had been murdered.
- When Daniel was eleven, the Libeskinds immigrated to Israel; at thirteen, he came to New York.
- He was emotionally very attached towards tragedies of such magnitude and probably this is the reason that he is able to convey it through his architecture better than others.
- The iconic examples are
- a)Jews museum, Berlin, Germany, depicting the pains of the Jews during the 2nd world war
- b) WTC site, New York, satisfying the sentiments of thousands of people whose relatives suffered from 9/11.
- He also belongs to a group of modern architects known as deconstructivists, a group that also includes such architects as Zaha Hadid and Frank O’Gehry
“I believe that design and architecture are the foremost communicators of all—they tell a story. Without them, there would be no history, no reference about where we are, where we’ve been and where we are going; not only as individuals but as a society” .
-Daniel Libeskind
About the Project:
- Competition: 1989
- Completion: 1999
- Opening: 2001
- Client: Stiftung Juedisches Museum Berlin
Technical Details:
- Building Area: 15,500 sq.m. (=166,840 sq.ft.)
- Structure: Reinforced concrete with zinc facade
Libeskind Zigzag in Berlin
The new Jewish Museum in Berlin, a striking deconstructivist structure is clad chiefly with titanium-covered zinc — a durable, stable, and malleable metal that reflects the light. The museum rises from a base whose line is frequently broken and unwinds in zigzag fashion.
DESIGN EVOLUTION:
- STAR represents Jewish history and culture throughout the history of Berlin and its absence in the present-day city.
- ZIG-ZAG LINE represents the atrocities done on Jewish
- Numerous numbers of trajectories between two points (AB), representing the individual biographical trajectories of citizens of Berlin, which Libeskind refers to as Histories.
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