Daniel Libeskind
Project type: Writing
Designer(s): Chua Jia Ning, Sherica
Year: 2022
Project Description:
The intention is that through such an exercise, they will not only be more capable and articulate (textually and visually) in making connections between topics learned, but also that they will be able to encounter new ways of representing and discussing (textually and visually) not just the theories presented in class but also any ideas encountered outside of this course.
Daniel Libeskind is a Polish–American architect, artist, professor, and set designer. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect. He is known for the design and completion of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany, which opened in 2001. (Wiki,2022)
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During the interview, he expresses his thoughts towards architecture, and what made him come to this fair today as one.
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He said that “Architecture is the atmosphere, the story that has been created, and you’re part of it.” (Fig.1) Explained that architecture is the atmosphere, the story being told through light 2 proportions, which is something that communicates to one directly, to our soul. When he compares architecture to music, the music you can hear, you can see the material of the instruments, but you can not see the architecture.
Architecture is a very strange field, he says. When you go to architecture, you’re right to ask what exactly it is, a civic art. But it’s an art, it’s not a private art, although in part it’s just like a problem. It is a gamble he believes; he says that in meaningful architecture there is a risk. He was describing and envisioning the projects, as having the building be beautiful, to integrate freshly into daily life. To him, he wants the building to express something when seen. He wants to create buildings to say more and even say things that people might not like to hear. Departing slightly from the frame, the world will look different. (Rethinking The Future,2022)
Libeskind expresses the ‘door’ as there is no door, to be able to access one got to go underground of the baroque because that is ‘where you find the darkness and the light of continuity across the abyss across the void’. To me, ‘door’ represents a transition to another realm or dimension, to explore because of the action of stepping into.
One of his projects, which interests me, would be the Jewish Museum (Fig. 2) by Daniel Libeskind. The Jewish Berlin Museum was reopened in an attempt to bring a Jewish presence to Berlin. Their aim was to secure the Berlin identity and establish a Jewish presence, which was lost during World War 2. For Libeskind, the extension of the Jewish Museum was more than a competition or commission. Conceptually, it expresses the feelings of absence, emptiness, and invisibility ceptually, it expresses the feelings of absence, emptiness, and invisibility – expressions of the disappearance of the Jewish Culture. (Pavka 2011)
The Jewish Berlin Museum is the act of using architecture as a means of narrative and emotion providing visitors with an experience of the effects of the Holocaust on both the Jewish culture and the city of Berlin.
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​Allowing visitors to experience what the Jewish people felt during World War 2, such that even in the darkest moments when they feel like they will never escape, a small trace of light restores hope. The building is less of a museum but an experience depicting what most visitors cannot understand. The Architect’s Fame is trying to establish a “semantic expression” and “imputable variation”. (Fig. 3)
Another project he did would be the National Holocaust Monument. The National Holocaust Monument was established to create a memorial in Canada’s Capital. The Monument honors the millions of innocent men, women, and children who were murdered under the Nazi regime and recognize those survivors who were able to eventually make Canada their home.
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The exposed concrete Monument is conceived as an experiential environment comprising six triangular, concrete volumes configured to create the points of a star. (Fig.4) The star remains the visual symbol of the Holocaust – a symbol that millions of Jews were forced to wear by the Nazi’s to identify them as Jews, exclude them from humanity, and mark them for extermination. The triangular spaces represent the badges the Nazi’s and their collaborators used to label homosexuals, Roma-Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political and religious prisoners for murder. (Libeskind, 2022)
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Personally, overall I would agree with his philosophy with mine. As I believe in the importance of user experience, which also leads to the building should allow or achieving a sense of story or expression within the walls, allowing the visitors to be able to understand the ‘Art’ of the building, built by a designer.
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