Daniel Libeskind
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Daniel Libeskind, (born May 12, 1946 in Łódź, Poland) is an American architect who rocketed to fame in 2003 after receiving a commission to create the master plan for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center. His architecture uses a language of skewed angles, intersecting geometries, shards, voids and punctured lines to communicate feelings of loss, absence and memory whilst addressing the immediate situation. Most of his works are museums and galleries.
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[edit] Biography
One of the leading contemporary architects of today, Daniel Libeskind is the son of Holocaust survivors and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1965. He is a 1965 alumnus of the Bronx High School of Science. He studied music in Israel and became a virtuoso accordion performer before pursuing an architecture degree in New York City's prestigious Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1970. In 1972, he graduated from Essex University with a postgraduate degree in History and Theory of Architecture. Since 1989 he has lived in Berlin with his wife Nina and their three children.
He is married to Nina Libeskind, daughter of former Canadian federal New Democratic Party leader David Lewis and sister of former Ontario NDP leader and United Nations ambassador Stephen Lewis.
[edit] The Libeskind Museums
Libeskind early credentials were academic and esoteric.
In the 1980s he was head of the Architecture Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The academic life gave way when he won two high profile design competitions. The first was in 1989 to build the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The museum was to take more than 10 years to build when it opened in September 2001.
The second major competition Libeskind won during this period was the Imperial War Museum North in Greater Manchester, England. which he won in 1997 and which was also completed in 2001.
Both of the museums had striking off-centered placement of simple geometric box structures. They also caught the eye of New York Governor George Pataki.
[edit] World Trade Center Master Design
[edit] 2002 World Trade Center Master Design Contest
After the 9/11 attacks destroyed the World Trade Center, Pataki and then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani established the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) to distribute more than $10 billion in federal funds aimed at rebuilding the towers and downtown Manhattan.
LMDC had questionable legal status at the World Trade Center since the owners of the property is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Larry Silverstein held a lease which permitted him to rebuild office towers on the site.
None-the-less, the LMDC declared that it -- rather than the site owners or leaseholder -- should create the master plan for a memorial and office towers.
In 2002, LMDC conducted a national competition for a master designer for Ground Zero.
Libeskind was among the finalists[1] which included:
- Studio Libeskind
- Foster and Partners (Norman Foster)
- Meier Eisenman Gwathmey Holl (Peter Eisenman and Richard Meier)
- THINK Team (Rafael Vinoly)
- United Architects
- Peterson/Littenberg
- Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Frank Gehry said several high profile architects refused to even participate as they considered the $40,000 (US) paid to the finalists was demeaning for a project of such stature.[2]
The other finalists depicted massive buildings and a more open space at their base. Libeskind's design spread the offices over smaller buildings with one large central tower and less open space at their base.
LMDC chose the Vinoly design (dubbed "Project Think"). However Pataki intervened on Libeskind's behalf. LMDC reversed course and Libeskind, who had never designed a big tower, wound up with a commission for one of the biggest, most high profile complexes in the world.
[edit] Memory Foundations Master Plan
[edit] Overview
Libeskind's plan called for a memorial in the center with five large office buildings arranged in an ascending spiral upward from the southeast of the site. The spiral's pinnacle - the tallest building at the site - would be the 1776 foot (541 m) Freedom Tower, designed by David Childs. Also included will be a transit station designed by Santiago Calatrava, a museum being designed by architectural firm Snøhetta, a cultural complex being designed by Frank Gehry, and various parks and public spaces.
The plan aims to fully replace the 10 million square feet (1 km²) of office space lost on September 11th, to memorialize the victims of the attacks, and to revive New York City's economy and skyline. If schedules were met, the plan would be completed by the year 2015.
Detailed information about the Memory Foundations site plan can be seen here.
LMDC was to be criticized for allowing Libeskind to attempt to micromanage the exact look and feel of the buildings. The argument had been that a master designer merely says what buildings go where and then leaves it up to the actual building architects to design the building. While most of his plan has changed so significantly that he now does not even acknowledge the plan as one of his official projects, there are major legacies that affect the overall project for better or worse.
[edit] Freedom Tower
The single biggest Libeskind legacy is the Freedom Tower. Libeskind envisioned a tower with aerial gardens and windmills with an off center spire reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet high. Libeskind thumbed his nose at a request to place it in a more rentable location next to the World Trade Center (PATH station) and instead placed it a block west because in profile it would line up and resemble the Statue of Liberty. Although the design was to be changed so the tower lost the Libeskind touches and become more buildable, the name "Freedom" stuck as did the height and the spot on the grid.
[edit] The Slurry Wall
The so called slurry wall that had kept the Hudson River out of the base of the original WTC tower was little more than an engineering footnote before Libeskind enshrined it as a basic part of any design. Libeskind's original plan called for the WTC memorial to be 70 feet below street level so that it could celebrate the wall. Because of various technical considerations to the depth was raised to 30 feet and there was a philosophical desire to turn the footprints into a piazza for the new buildings. The slurry wall is now considered a major part of the memorial process contributed to efforts to protect other parts of the footings of the original towers. The idea of a sunken rather than street level memorial has stuck thus far.
[edit] Wedge of Light
Since the memorial would be below ground level, Libeskind left the northeast corner of the site open as he hoped the light around the September autumnal equinox would hit the footprints. There was considerable criticism that this would not happen. However, the World Trade Center (PATH station) was set at an angle so that it would permit the light if it in fact comes.
[edit] Memorial Master Design Abandoned in 2003 With Reflecting Absence
Libeskind's plans first started coming undone in the 2003 World Trade Center Memorial Design Competition.
Libeskind had envisioned that the memorial would be 30 feet below ground, with an exposed truck ramp coming in from the southwest corner. Further a massive golden World Trade Center museum would hang suspended over the northeast corner of the site. A Performing Arts Center would be built over part of the footprints of one tower and a think tank/art gallery (to become the International Freedom Center) was to overhang the other footprint. The entire southeast corner was to have a giant waterfall.
The design rules said you should follow that guideline but you absolutely did not have to. All of the finalists except Michael Arad met those guidelines. Arad totally obliterated Libeskind's buildings and his design won the World Trade Center Memorial competition.
[edit] Freedom Tower Redesign Ends the Libeskind Era
Libeskind's involvement with Ground Zero effectively ended in 2004 after he also lost a battle with David Childs who is actually designing the Freedom Tower for developer Larry Silverstein. Libeskind's soaring glass enclosed design with airborne windmills was considered unsafe and unbuildable. Libeskind continued to be quoted in the newspapers about developments but his active involvement was over.
[edit] Portfolio
The following projects are listed on the Libeskind official site. The first date is the competition date. The second is the estimated completion date
- 1989-1999 The Jewish Museum Berlin - Berlin, Germany
- 1995-1998 Felix Nussbaum Haus - Osnabrück, Germany
- 1996-2004 The Danish Jewish Museum - Copenhagen, Denmark
- 1997-2002 Imperial War Museum North - Manchester, Trafford, England
- 1998-2003 Studio Weil - Port d'Andratx, Mallorca, Spain
- 1998-2007 The Contemporary Jewish Museum - San Francisco, California
- 2000-2005 The Wohl Centre - Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
- 2000-2006 Extension to the Denver Art Museum - Denver, Colorado
- 2000-2006 The Museum Residences - Denver, Colorado
- 2000-2009 WESTside - Bern, Switzerland
- 2001-2003 London Metropolitan University Graduate Centre - London, England
- 2002-2006 Michael Lee Chin Crystal, Royal Ontario Museum - Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- 2002-2008 Creative Media Centre - Hong Kong
- 2003-2005 Facade for Hyundai Development Corporation Headquarters - Seoul, South Korea
- 2003-2008 Militärhistorisches Museum - Dresden, Germany
- 2004-2005 Memoria e Luce - Padua, Italy
- 2004-2007 Epic - Sacramento, USA
- 2004-2007 The Ascent at Roebling's Bridge - Covington, Kentucky
- 2004-2008 Grand Canal Performing Arts Centre and Galleria - Dublin, Ireland
- 2004-2008 New Center for Arts and Culture - Boston, Massachusetts
- 2004-2014 Fiera Milano - Milan, Italy
- 2005-2006 Jewish War Veterans Memorial - Toronto, Canada
- 2005-2007 Aura - Sacramento, California
- 2005-2007 The Hummingbird Centre for the Performing Arts - Toronto, Canada
- 2005 Union City Condominiums - Union City, New Jersey
- 2005 Unawatuna - Sri Lanka
[edit] Completed
- the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany;
- The 'Frederic C. Hamilton Building' of the Denver Art Museum
- the Felix-Nussbaum-Haus in Osnabrück, Germany, a museum dedicated to the life and art of the painter Felix Nussbaum.
- the Imperial War Museum North in Greater Manchester, United Kingdom
- the London Metropolitan University Graduate Centre on the Holloway Road in north London.
- the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen.
- Studio Weil, Mallorca, the private Barbara Weil gallery building in Spain.
- Tangent, Hyundai Development Company Headquarters, Seoul, South Korea.
- Memoria e Luce, 9/11 Memorial, Padua, Italy.
- The Wohl Centre at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat- Gan, Israel.
[edit] Underway
Canada
- The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a major expansion project of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, slated for completion in 2006.
- Jewish War veterans memorial (Toronto) - A war memorial remembering soldiers that died fighting for Canada. The memorial will contain two walls reaching 15m, and an amphitheatre with seating for 250 people. Construction is slated to begin in 2007.
[edit] Proposed
- major renovations to the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto
- 45-story (192 m high) apartment tower in downtown Warsaw, Poland
- Grand Canal Theatre, Grand Canal Square, IFSC, Dublin, Ireland
- Ørestaden, new city, Copenhagen, Denmark
- "Aura" a 39-story (444 ft high) condo tower in Downtown Sacramento, CA
[edit] Unbuilt
- 'The Spiral' extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, was cancelled following its failure to attract funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
- EB Tower - a 23 storyes building in the center of Brescia (Italy). Headquarter of the local newspaper and luxury apartements
[edit] Other projects
In addition to his architectural projects, Libeskind has also worked in the theatre creating set designs for opera. He created the sets for the 2001 production of Tristan und Isolde at Saarbrücken's Saarländisches Staatstheater. The following year he designed the sets for a production of Messiaen's Saint Francis of Assisi by Deutsche Oper in Berlin. He has also written free verse poetry included in his book Fishing from the Pavement.
[edit] Bibliography
- Breaking Ground (2004) (ISBN 1-57322-292-5)
- Jewish Museum Berlin (with Helene Binet) (1999) (ISBN 90-5701-252-9)
- Daniel Libeskind (2001) (ISBN 0-7893-0496-1)
- Daniel Libeskind Radix-Matrix (1997) (ISBN 3-7913-1727-X)
- Daniel Libeskind: Countersign (1992) (ISBN 0-8478-1478-5)
[edit] External links
- Biography (on Libeskind homepage)
- Projects list (on Libeskind homepage)
- floornature.com interview
- Guardian interview
- designboom.com interview
- Hugh Pearman interview
- "Architecture is a communicative art" Lecture by Daniel Libeskind
- Architecture: the Future of Memory, video lecture
- National Review Report "Shred the Libeskind Blueprints"
- Rebuilding the rubble - The Guardian, June 29, 2002.
- In-depth interview and profile.
- London Metropolitan University Graduate Centre Photos
- The New Criterion: Should the World Trade Center be Rebuilt?
- 2006 Open Source Mentoring Interview with Daniel Libeskind
Categories: 1946 births | Living people | Polish Jews | American architects | Naturalized citizens of the United States | Jewish American architects | Bronx High School of Science alumni | Alumni of The Cooper Union | University of Essex alumni | Deconstructivism | Polish-Americans | People from the Bronx | People from Łódź
