Daniel Libeskind: Between zero and infinity (November 15, 2017)

good evening it's good to see so many people here which prolly speak volumes of our guests you usually try when we have figures of the caliber of Danny Olivas keen to do it like a brief introduction and let them do the talk I suffer from the same illness that machine offers of ego and all that but I try always to tone it down and don't make it about the introduction I'll try my best again and there's a couple of things I want to point out which i think is important in the conduct because it's something that it made me happy and proud that Daniel knew his conflictive tonight is one of the lectures of our students selects every year a group a group of lectures in our culinary selected by our students and it's always great what I'm saying is great is because I think is interesting for me that the students want to listen a figure like Daniel he said artist a theories a teacher and an architect and he has for sure one of the most unique and strange trajectories when one can think of for an architect the reason why is because I think like many not that many figures in our field has many different different periods and different trajectories that somehow they tried to make sense the reason also were unhappy to Daniel in skins here speaking because he's a polemic figure it's not that he's not a guy who walks through the middle and that's something that we appreciate always but the other thing which I find incredibly interesting to listen what he had to say is he somebody who really has been in the darkest corners of discipline our knowledge to the straw Ranieri work of micro megazor chamber works or install of the early installations to of course the the breakthrough jewish museum this was really incredibly sophisticated in depth for the discipline audience but at the same time he start to figure it out him with Nina and the office that they set up they start to figure it out how to transition in that to bring someone's ideas to operate while we tend to call in academia the real world which is actually said what are we hey like the Academy world is unreal well that maybe is true but there is something about that which i think is fascinating to see what is the relation of that which i think is always been at the intersection of what i consider the ultimate the struggle in any kind of architecture education which is the relation between the discipline on the profession and how we go back and forth between those territories those territories it goes without saying his his early work in chamber wars a micro mega is already in part of the history but i don't want to talk of Danny Olivas gun as an historical figure because his work is very much here and now I'm happening now but what I'm really interesting to see is how the relation between those two wars can start to operate and how that can be negotiated and this is a thing that's why I think the polemical the polemic lies I think the challenge died lies and as I said he has been at the center of many polemics over his long career by now and I think that is how the body of an architect should be and I think if you're not peace enough half of the people you're doing something wrong so half of the people should agree with you have for the people should listen with you one will wonder for such a success right but again in the early in the early not early war but the transition were like the Victoria Albert Museum which I consider a highly influential project Alexander + master plan and of course more recently after the the World Trade Center competition and now the much bigger scale and enlarge a small by still you guys still do a small budget project which i think is very interesting to see but muscle be what I found interesting is that I don't know if this was by choice or because life happens that there was a moment that the the decision to don't remain only inside in this discipline our discussion only and of course the discipline never goes away but in that territory in that struggle between the digital and practice I think there is where the work starts so in that light and in that spirit I think it's a great time to have Daniel even skin to lecture hidden sire thank you for being here thank you so much it's great to be here because Sark is really one of the great schools of architecture it's always been there not too many great schools of architecture that follow early architecture design they're not swayed by just the fashions of the moment and I wanted to just share with you something similar but you said because I never had a goal you know most gurus tell you you should have a goal and then try to get to your goal I never had a goal in my life maybe I can't come from a kind of a Jewish design idea that follow the path the path is vulnerable because you can be swayed to the left or to the right very easily but if you stay on the path you'll you'll discover a world where I discover the world that is kind of amazing a world that really opened up and continues to open up for me and I start with this between zero and infinity it's a very my first book in the seventies and I have to tell you a story because after I left school I did some work you know I never I didn't work for an architect I didn't succeed to work for an architect for more than a day and tried two or three offices great offices but I said that's not for me continue to draw so Toshio Nakamura the head of the A+ you very famous person invited me said miss name is Ken why don't you put some of your work to project we'll do an issue of work that is not built but you know I didn't have any buildings so I put all sorts of work and I got designed it and I created with Lorraine wild this great designer I sent it to Tokyo was there for a couple of months that came back the same box came back with a letter saying dear Marcela wiscons we are after all an architectural publication we cannot publish this work this is not architecture so it's kind of a little downtrodden I went to see my mentor and Dean jon heder great person and he was just laughing hysterically and he said why don't you without opening the Baxters go to Rizzoli across the street see mr. Mandor Shelley and shown the work and how lucky that mr. Mallard shall he published this work so that's a work that I started in school Yunos co-wash I started cutting up plans of architecture I started building you know volumes and three-dimensional projections of these plans I was interested in other kind of materials that create dynamics of architecture and then I started creating models you know my own and I have no I had no commissions and I had no really taste to work for anyone but I have to say Nina's here she's my wife my partner now I would have never been able to do and that's a clue to do it either because she supported me for so many years working as I was doing absolutely nothing and so you know I was able to build build model that I was interested in architectural models exploring color you know going on from kind of that education that I had you know with John Harrigan Peter Eisenman and Richard Meier and you know all the great you know theoreticians at that time an architects to my own sense of how would architecture proceed into the future with me and of course I use any means that I could collage drawing you know okay there's a desk you know this was the time before computers you couldn't really download materials or you know delete materials you just had materials you had and you could work with them and then I decided to do a series of drawings I don't know where you know my idea came from but it was kind of a mad idea because I had to create a kind of explosions of a drawing that had neither two or three dimensional background to it I call them micro mega and I really thought I was on the verge of discovering something that was really architecture in the city now it's easy to say it in retrospect but at that time it was not considered architecture now I'm lucky that it's a museum or an art but it was just kind of waste of time but no I'm doing architecture this is really architecture if you don't have a client you don't have a social basis you don't have a political program you don't go to draw you know fancy castles and theoretical schools you can use drawing and you develop drawing and and my second series of drawings was more I think even more complex called chamber works because they used to be a professional musician at one point of my life so I tried to connect structures of architecture structures of music structures that explore or implode into different aspects of the world that I was interested in and these were drawings very calculated drawings they were not emotional drawings they were they really you know I was always admiring the great you know Renaissance Baroque architecture did the treatises polari oh if you read his treatise I mean he never succeeded to do a single building that looks like this by the way in the treatise all the measure runs are different his bill but I said you know I can't do my own your you know my own book of architecture so you know I I worked with horizons vertical and horizontal horizons and I created the series of 28 drugs which took me you know to still another place in the path then when I was a teacher I was ahead of Cranbrook School of Architecture I responded to a competition in Venice of Vienna's be an hour with my students it was a competition to design Italian cities but I thought you know it's not no use designing an Italian city create machines like as Vitruvius recommended to go to be an architect first do some drawings and then build yourself some machines so if you're gonna build the reading machine of course ramela the water wheels the the eternal circle of the same of nature I produce those singular books that I printed also which unfortunately disappeared all of them disappeared I built the memory machine which was a cane a kind of puppeteer that first one was a medieval no electricity was used in it really it was an experiment in darkness with candle light don't use any machine tools this one was more like a puppet theater of the mind you know that the Renaissance it's all pulleys and levers and and tricks of you know dumb for the king of an emperor so created this large scale machine figure out the memory machine and I had you know really a lot of elaborate elaborate things that I thought were crucial to design a city and then the writing architecture machine which was large scale machine had had these these cubes that were rotated individually in a chaotic ways and could produce a city I was lucky that I received you know the Lion of Venice because it was a proposal for inter interior intersubjective architect architect shouldn't be designing for themselves by themselves with all sorts of peoples and except the chaotic element that enters architecture where you have non architects working in architecture then very recently the Venice invited me to do so I continued drawing and that's by the way because I think that's the origin to me it's not going with you know two-by-fours to the forest Laurier and you know trying to do a primitive heart it's not the sukkah it's not the Adams house and paradise it's an intellectual discipline so I did these drawings called sonnets of Babylon 101 drawings they're different I've driven and it was a connection between Shakespeare because I love and I've memorized many many Shakespeare sonnets and also Babylon the idea of Iraq Babylon the Babylonian Talmud what happens in the world what new techniques are developing and these drawings are always you know apparel to my work I don't do them academically but they are somehow part of how I you know keep the momentum going and I you know Albert Einstein said something very very ontology said life is like riding a bicycle you got to move forward in wondering if you want to retain your balance it's a smart thing for a great genius to say such a simple thing just keep momentum so when I was in Berlin I participated competitions this was you know seeing the city in three dimensional fragments that come together in a very unexpected way and Alexanderplatz competitions and of course my first competition that I warned I never entered a competition before this one I wanted but then the wall came down and I couldn't build this otherwise maybe would have been built Berlin 1987 yes something like that and that was you know enemies your mother not for the deconstructivist exhibition so this is the first project that I built I never built as you saw I never built even a small project I didn't know any architects where I grew up I didn't know many doctors lawyers any professionals I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in the Bronx I was an immigrant so for me architecture was something very very different no things are on your mind voices why do I call it voices because I think architectures boys based in many ways not on things you see but in the unheard voices often voices that have been repressed in history voices that whisper they don't shout whispers somewhere from an edge or margin of space and that is Berlin and when I came there when I won well at that time it was not called a Jewish Museum by the way it was called a writer on bow the extension building to the Berlin Museum but I did everything in my power to do something else because my parents were Holocaust survivors I grew up in Poland I didn't go to the library or archives to study the Holocaust and the destruction of what happened from Germany from Berlin the eradication the first real genocide intellectual genocide to decide to exterminate people now we are more used to it because it's as Derrida said between between genocide Holocaust and then Hiroshima at the bomb the world has also completely we don't see it a human soul in the same way so I plotted the star across the city of Berlin a star in which I connected Germans and Jews I can intermarried them across the matrix I started with you know Frederick I marker the veil maker that's what the names talking about to me is a Protestant theologian and I married him to van Hagen Michel van Hagen the great woman Jewish I tried to assimilate did not succeed who invented German literature she had the salon of Goethe Schiller that she kind of invented how amazing paul salon miss van der and so on and i created really a new ground for the building so of course the ground is in berlin from linda Strasser but that's my ground it's taken thinkable is the names and of course Jews who came to Berlin from Poland from of the places took the name Berlin I started with the name Berlin but I couldn't really ramify it to to the to the hundreds of dollars or the millions that theoretically it should be ratified so there it is the building you see the later on I do the court the glass court the building is a zigzagging zigzagging structures showing the the turmoil of history that changes directions as we speak but there's one central straight line it's a line of emptiness that lines through run through the building and it's it's it's absent it's it's it's really the total fatal destruction that will not leave us it's whispers to us through that void across the beautiful city of Berlin today I was the only architect that 190 architects or something in competition you'd be interested every architect and there were some good ones put a bridge between the Baroque building and new building I decided that such a thing could not be done you cannot put a bridge a visible bridge between the Baroque and the new building you have to put the bridge in the depth of the underground and that's what I propose that's the entrance you go through the Baroque building which before being a museum was the courthouse or Berlin you know done by a very famous architect and then you go to the underground it's like on trilogy you have three ascending plate going to three different places and then on the left you see the city wood Lodge that's where I come from you know it's it's its deportation of the state the deportation of the city it's what Carl Schmitt the Nazi philosopher called the emergency situation so that's how you enter into the underground and by the way that's not just a metaphorical because in 1933 stones from Jewish cemeteries were used to construct the subways of Berlin and at the height of the Enlightenment there was darkness at the height of Hegel and you know Lessing and Kierkegaard in Berlin there was prejudice bigotry and so on so yes that's the entrance and then you one of the routes leads you to a dead end and I call it the Holocaust Tower and by the way for the longest time just interesting from an architectural point of view I had no I did it the building was already under construction I said there's no light there's no necessity to put any light into such a structure because it's a dead end it's a total darkness there's not know then I by accident read a story of a survivor she was in Brooklyn now and she was many years later saying that when she was locked into the you know cattle cars to go to the Sutro of concentration camp she said she saw a line of light and then she reflected I don't know where that line came from maybe it was just a crack in the car maybe I saw a plume of an airplane a white plume of an airplane smoke but it didn't matter to me because I survived I believe I survived because I held on to the line of light so at the end I the line of light really very much at the top but kind of how much the fact that without hope you cannot really build anything nothing you know it's not worth building anything if there's no hope and then of course there's the garden you saw it's a little bit like my writing machine it's 49 columns 7 times 7 the central column is filled with the earth of Israel and the 48 worth of brotherhood 1948 the foundation of the State of Israel it's a tilted garden called a garden of exile because Berlin is also exiled from itself Berlin is and you know is it's an LA it's in New York it's in Sydney it's in South Africa it's not where it where you find Berlin today so it's also a garden of exile and there's vegetation but it's high up inside of these columns which which feeds the water and and you you have a view of a ship you're you you lose your orientation of it you get slightly nauseous you don't know where you are that this the buildings look crooked on the outside of the street and that the third road the road to the continuity across the void across the bed end across the Exile goes to the collections and I want to show you this because the main stair does not end in a door I didn't want to say that like there is some redeeming feature here when you go to the country there's no redemption this is a blankness that you just shift laterally to go into the connections so to the corrections and that's Berlin I mean there are no treasures here it's fragments now of 2,000 year old Jewish history in Berlin we've started with as a Berlin Museum but it's called 2,000 years of Jewish history in Germany and so the windows they are not really windows there are these cuts of that map of that matrix that I showed you before and then there is the memory void that then runs throughout you see see the bridges connecting across and the here I want to say I used the Peres architectural idea it was my own musical idea I wanted to complete an opera it's a strange thing for architects today no competition but one of my favorite operas are called Moses and Aaron I don't know whether you know it by Schoenberg Aaron our first Arnold Schoenberg then many came to LA our own Schoenberg exile from Berlin Jew Tufnell music so he wrote Moses an hour on two acts in Berlin fantastic and then there's an aporia at the end of act 2 and there's no music just Moses calls on to God and there's nothing no there's not no answer forthcoming and the third act is unwritten it's just MP I saw I saw the manuscript so I said I can complete it he's right you cannot completely musically anymore but you could complete it in the acoustical space in there in the echoes of the footsteps of the visitors as they move through the space and it is there if you listen to it you can see the answer to that Moses query in that the great opera and of course the building is emblematic it has many different devices which are used it's it's it's I'm glad to say it's changed the city a lot it took a long time to be built not because it was a difficult building to build but because their politics and I have to just make this clear that this building would have never built God been building if not for Nina because she's got capacities that are by the way I would never be an architect if she did not join me I kidnapped her she had her own profession and when when we were in Berlin I said to her are you gonna join me and she said but I've never been in an architect's office in my life and I said the same Arclight this to me so that's the building and then I was able to build you know in the beginning in the program there was no need for dinners for parties but now they've grown it's grown there's bar mitzvahs the last time I was there was a dinner of the politicians of Germany so I was able to continue and and it's you know with the park and and even later on just recently in the bloomin Halle which is across the street have started historically protected building old flower market I was able to do the Jewish Museum Academy where people can you know have data there's a library you know part of the problem which we're never part of the original program because originally said you know no more than 30,000 people come to building a year and then at some point I had to take the whole air-conditioning system out and replace it because the figures were you know by manufacturers but you know in this building at the academy the museum allowed me to do something I chose my favorite quote by Moses Maimonides he was a Jewish philosopher and great philosopher about a thousand years ago and he said here the truth whoever speaks it I never forgot a way and I put it in the original language that Judea Arabic you know he worked in Egypt in Morocco is a part of the Arab world and it and the building is standing in a Turkish neighborhood it's a Turkish it's an immigrant from Syria and everywhere so I thought that's good to put an Arabic Hebrew German English here the truth whoever speaks it it's a complex idea if you speak that you should hear the truth and there it is a building that that that took a long time but really many Chancellor's of Germany told me that it a bigger impact on how Germans see themselves so I didn't build this building for the Jews people from that area from Germany it's a bigger impact than all the political statements educational programs because a building can be important doesn't have to be big but can tell a story and this building has a narrative very recently I completed just a few weeks ago a memorial to the Holocaust in Ottawa in Canada is the only country allied country that does not have a member of the Holocaust every other country has its in arawa was opened by Trudeau Prime mr. Trudeau and again I base it on that star because that's how Jews were murdered they were murdered with a star even if they were not religious but the star was deconstructed by the Germans into triangles so based on triangles as well triangles were used in different colours to murder homosexuals to murder Roma political prisoners people who were mentally or physically unwell so they had a whole typology of triangle and then the double triangle it's fascinating this this was an intellectual murder it was not a so I hoped here and I you can see the large scheme mirrors by ed Burtynsky one of my favorite photographers large-scale murals photographs today of the sights of murder so they are not these you know historical 1945 photographs they're just nice in the forest trees and I did something else I aligned at the center there's a memorial flame there's an eternal flame there's many different triangular and complex spaces to meditate there ventures to sit it's in the middle of the city but it's facing you see the tower it's called the peace tower the tower of the House of Commons of Canada Parliament because my idea was this you have a sent to another level you look at the tower the Holocaust did not start with just hooligans on the streets hitting people it started with decisions of the government to deprive citizens of their human rights the government I thought yes when you talk about the Holocaust and we are living in a world that is very vulnerable as we all know look at the government and there it is it's it's it's in the middle of you know a great city it's dramatic I used very very simple means to just concrete but it's a public space it's a Piazza and I see people on bicycles kids coming families it doesn't have any really texts on it it's just just a space okay an architect cannot really be an architect without doing a home but this was my first time I was able to do a home because I you know it started with big projects nobody ever asked me to their home but how lucky I was that a couple came to me said we'd like you to design home and they are really art experts architecture experts they have already great things in other cities to make a home that we don't have to put our art in we want the home itself to inspire us so there's a planet a small home you can see in section did you know it's it's kind of complex because it's sometimes detaches itself in section and it's in a beautiful place it's in Connecticut you know it's on this green field and it's a it's a monocoque construction stainless steel you know it's hard to describe it because the colors change there depending on on how you approach the house sometimes I've seen it black I've seen it light blue I've seen it brown it's it's this this amazing material of course building that has no count it's just a folder formed that is also very functional you know not a lot of windows and no picture windows here no big squares nothing like that it's just like torches light coming in in the winter and the right angle so I worked very closely you have to work very closely with clients who are sophisticated and in this beautiful landscape and also they asked me to design everything including their kitchen I was really amazed you know see they actually told me how they like to entertain cook how to do everything that's kind of gazaam Khan's work even the so far the carpets the little tables that the bookcase even the shower and the bathtub now that was there was fantastic I have to tell you I don't like the English bathtubs with the curves really they disturb me there's the kind of the 19th century Victorian idea so it's a very sharp bathtub it's dangerous and then I was even able to design the faucets because I don't like those silver faucets off you know Arne Jacobsen I like the aforesaid they really like a straight line you open it and then you close it in just a straight line so it works there fantastic and of course the atmosphere of house is so important you know it's about love it's about intimacy it's about the bed it's about what the building looks like at night it's about home so I was so lucky that I always say I've made only one mistake in this house because once they gave us the keys to stay in the house for a weekend Nina has never forgiven me she's like well why don't we have a like this and she's right okay because I'm also speaking to students it's interesting to design a very regular project now I've had a chance to design museums big projects city plans what if you design just an apartment building on a corner block in a European city like Berlin what would it look like so here this could Berlin is all you know it's kind of formulaic ever since you know 18th century every building is kind of typological it's got the shingle room without much light in the corner right so I said okay I have a chance I have a client a regular corner lot chassé Strauss are very close to where the wall was still part of the East try to design within the parameters of you know apartments something that looks different that it's interesting that is innovative and I develop actually maybe don't sit here a tile with an Italian company Casa Grande that is ecological it's it's a terracotta tile or anyone at like the metal building that the concrete warm terracotta tile with titanium that can transform the carbon dioxide to oxygen it's actually very good and it's three-dimensional you can see it here in the sea of buildings right the dead corner yeah it should stand out as a courtyard and the facade is not folded no form just formally but I want to create different units there are many units each one different there are big units small units try to use the possibility of of of the building lines backwards and forwards still within the laws obviously you cannot transcend the laws and make an economical building that breaks the scale of that corner and gifts an identity gives a luminosity you can see the tile here I think a little bit better and the interiors that apartment are also you know in front of you is that you know there's like the CIA headquarters of Germany very boring it's like endless buildings for six blocks but I want to make something that even makes the building look good like in a George gross painting right you get you got kind of a little balcony little larger windows that travel around so yeah that's that's the challenge of creating a regular apartment building and that's a huge challenge because it's it's a formula it's and even you can see the Schinkel corner which is usually dark I broke light through these triangular glazed windows and I'm very happy because the buildings sold rapidly that's very important when you work for a developer that the building is a success that the developer act makes money quickly and rapidly and he asked you them to do another project City well city we know that the world is about cities I had a chance to to create a project in Singapore Singapore is a great place it's a city state very amazing place very poor 7 years ago 60 years ago is a poor place poverty but the the head of you know this decided let's plant trees also all streets should have trees that was his first idea because a genius if you have you know with with with trees already the city looks better than just a muddle of faceless buildings ok I didn't build trees but these buildings double curved buildings and also the buildings on the bottom look small but they're pretty big actually and this was really more about density how do you create really high density by raising the height of the building which is not allowed in Singapore so I have to tell you the story I created this double double curved buildings you see the powers six of them and they're connected with amenity bridges and the developers kept obey said great so we warned the competition fantastic great then after a while I said look at mr. Lee risk and let's be honest it's too expensive to do double curves that's just one curve it's enough you know good look like a sail so hard it's ok we won't went back to the Redevelopment Agency of Singapore and they said after the developer we gave you 50% more height because of the form of the building of course the developer immediately brought back the second curve so here it is you know it's a kind of ribbon of buildings on on the canal even the lower buildings are pretty complex in order to take advantage of their position in this very very high density environment and provide a sense of kind of almost the Baroque that every window has a you know view they're very dramatic actually Ridley Scott is using it for a stage set for some futuristic film but really it's it's it's really a lively place with a lot of amenities for the boardwalk as the club houses places to be high scale interesting architectural II and because of the high density idea and the fact that I was able to raise the building 50 percent higher I could really reduce the footprints footprint of the whole project and so the people have grass and green spaces and I think that's the key and I'm very proud of the fact that this project in a company city that as Jean Nouvel and Foster and so I mean everybody every great architect I admire is working there was and remains the most profitable project in that city so that's in the interesting because double curve people said back are you sure people want to live because there's nothing really below them and there's nothing exactly above them but people in the sense of space the sense of and then I received another project very different you can see reflections this is corals very different planning regulations so I used another logic here because you couldn't make buildings this tall my logic was make very des building but don't build anything in the front or build very low buildings in the front so every building even though they're very close to each other gets a sense of space and a sense of amplitude and and they stand in water I kind of made the illusion that all the bends rise out of water there's a lot of complexity in the in this what appears to be simple elevation but every one of them is strangely unique and that's part of it customize the building it's it's it takes a lot of work I now understand what Mies van der Rohe mad because Mies van der said you should design only one building in your life and just repeat it said genius there's a genius of 1920s right don't design two different buildings design one good one and boom on and Toronto bitter on the Chicago you know where but you know it's a different era so you have to struggle harder to create uniqueness to create and I'm most proud that ahead of the Redevelopment Agency she is a fantastic planner architect she told me the story when this opened she was sitting there in one of those units she called her husband she lives in a village said like let's move to a cool place let's move over here so okay that's all important war we live you know when I did the impaired Imperial War Museum in Manchester I remembered the words of Winston Churchill who's very smart person who said they will never be a time without war there will always be war is just how do we handle these wars how do we steer them to a better place so a chance to compete in a competition which many people were perplexed why would I even compete for the largest building in Germany largest museum the National Military Museum of Germany interesting and you'd may not know Dresden in this balota painting but it was considered the Venice of the north the most beautiful city in Europe outside of Italy when you go to the north there's no other City Dresden with its artworks amazing architecture churches it's it's it's it's a jewel and of course you know this picture the complete devastation and the Allied bombings of 1945 we're to see where just leveled just nothing remained says it's a beautiful photograph with this remaining angel there but yeah that the city was just tabula rasa that's my building it's their armory which is a large-scale armory built in the 19th century but quickly became the kaisers museum Saxon Museum Nazi Museum Soviet Museum is German Museum and then after unification people said what are we gonna do with this building so this was an idea place the building into a triangulated mode which points at the first bomb that fell on in 1945 and then B in the Triangle that the pilots saw as they bombed the city at the same time give a view from that bombing position into the completely rebuilt city so your is your simultaneous in both pictures during the pictures of the destruction of the city and birth of the city's estranged but I'm always like generals and then military because they once they make up their mind that that's the project they want there was no way to dissuade them and of course other architects said no no we were not allowed to build in front of the building cuz a historical you know facade but I didn't do anything I just cut it in two places so here it is here it is in plan you can see it's a very large vast structure which which you know has so many exhibits now it's exhibits from the Teutonic Knights twelve century of German history kidding me and this is a West Point this is where German officers go to learn about their their military history so it's a very important and the arrow or the vector as I call it incorporates the old stair it's totally different structure it's concrete but it's off-center exactly between the chronology between 1914 and 1945 which is are the military six years of fashion which brought the world so much suffering is so much death so for the architects you can see it's it's how do you weave this museum with it's very very strong message through the historical fabric and kind of create a contrast without any ambiguity of what you're doing in this building I of course it's not just a facade it's like a system that that moves right through the building it evacuates the old history towards a point towards that point of the bomb and i renovated it was very poorly treated in under east german government it was kind of falling apart was kind of kitschy restoration but I really restore it to what the armory was and this is the Napoleonic period with well you know hundreds of thousands of people died and then there's a cup and that's that wedge it's just cuts it's a different it could through all the columns why not cut through the columns you know you know and and there's a text actually exhibition designer had a great close of it I don't know you know his text on war you have to read it because every general in the United States is reading this book right now it comes it's very very clever so like all peace it's just a deferment of war all peace is just a strategy of the next floor it's it's brutal its horrifying it's tragic and yet it's it's brought us into the 20th century with so much death think about it the Holocaust 30 million people perished so the staircase goes around around that that new form which is oblique has vertical of it rains throughout emblematic first exhibition actually is animals in the military I you know I knew about the lions of Judah and the Hannibal elephants right but do we ever think that that the French in a sixty seventy sent a cat into space like at the dog that by the Russians and do we even think that pigeons dogs anthrax biological warfare it's all about how humanity has employed nature for purposes of violence so it's interesting to work in a museum that has this story to tell particularly in this this new wedge and there's the old staircase you look into it it's you're back in the sort of period of Weimar or something and and you see the toys kids who love to play with you know toys guns it's just an even the Alouettes another reference to nature the French helicopter you know there's the exhibit in very interesting ways not confirming ones idea of what these objects are but really terrifying terrifying how what we produce what technology is produced and of course things that come from the from the air you know what falls on the ground it's it's a very minimalist expression because in this wedge in the armor you see the history in this which only questions are asked the following why do people follow authoritarian leaders no ends are given why do people march in order you know through why do they carry guns and on order no one has ever given answers to these questions now people tried but no one so no no answers are given but it's full of life and by the way as you ascend to that dressed in black as they call in German The Dresden view you see the cities bombed the fragments of cities bombed from Dresden by the air force of Dresden you know feel each component Coventry in England many cities destroyed from Dresden so there's no sentimentality here and then you leave the museum I think that's the most radical part you leave the museum on an upward slant into the wind and you're in front of the museum you're in this you can see the reflection on the right you can see the outdoor space on the left and you're literally suspended on this metallic open framework it's a little scary but that's what I've wanted at the end it's just the individual is suspended in front of the military history because it's a democracy the military is not sitting behind the walls the people on the front and you get a view of the bombing site you get a view fantastic view of a frontier and the downtown of you know the Baroque city and you should get a sense that in a democracy military should not be hidden it should be exposed and you should a visitor should himself or herself be suspended in that space in front of the building in front of all those items anyway it's a building that has attracted many people has changed you know it's not any more people are wars or like you know see equipment it's really an institution that that makes one think about what why is this the largest building in Germany and it's not a building in Washington and London or in Paris it's in Germany very important school I wanted to show you a very modest building because it's good to work in very modest projects in beautiful places this is in Durham in in UK and it's a building you see it here that is basically the budget was eight million dollars it's not a lot of money from A to Z everything included so not a lot build the three-story building offices nothing more there are 80 officers and brothers more building so I didn't want to build you know who wants to build a three-story building these offices it's not how can you take something of the idea of fundamental physics and my son is astrophysicist told me a little better the logic of space there's amazing things that are so I tried to draw this perfect cosmic you know curve and and you can see it in this drawing sort of trying to implode it all into a very very modest small building which is on a nice campus Durham is a great Cathedral it's it's a concrete building very sustainable with wooden large facades and I created this form in order to use as much possible spaces where people informally can meet scientists so you can see each planet is completely different I mean it's not easy to do in a three-story building it's different but I didn't succeed in doing a kind of a spiral with balconies places to meet outdoor spaces and also the atrium which is you can see you can look through it I didn't have they didn't have enough money for curtains at their chamber works there so you can look through the light thing come into the center of the building and of course there are offices which which each scientists has to have and it's an elegant small interesting building but yeah it's it's it's something that I really enjoyed make something that is so limited you know what can you do you know the budget is for a three-story office building even the atrium was pretty difficult to finance but somehow it looks good people like it it's a building that that sort of has a presence on campus and at the end you know we are in the turmoil of the cosmic spaces we are just like a little piece of dust in this face climate that's a subject that everybody's interests that everybody knows that it's important this is my french year I want three competitors I've never built anything in France Italy Germany other places I want to companies in Paris this competition to lose and another competition nice so he was the idea the idea was here's an Asian city of Toulouse you know it it's near the Pyrenees low city beautiful called city IQ Louis Kahn says that it's his favorite city this in Alba Albee the program was in their railway intersections produce a very fat building big fat building so I said to my clients no let's not do it fat building let's do that tall as possible maybe we can with this program 165 meter building but let's really relate it to the it's on train tracks you get the railway station is next to it the Canal du Midi is running record let's create something really fantastic not just some plants but carve deep into the building and have cultural activities at the very top there's a hotel's there's officers there's retail but it's it's it's like a segment of a city and it's the first step and I also proposed how to cover the rest of the tracks which divide the town you can see that that town is divided most European towns are divided by the railway tracks so here there's a physical model it's not easy to do this to curve so deeply that we can use the green both inside and outside it's not just a decorated facade and also create something that has the dynamic and sense of this 19th century 18th century City where you can see that spiral really moving across the glazed facades and having a sense of place and I was actually surprised that I won this competition because everybody has had very conservative buildings people you know they already know the game so they say we know what's gonna get milled but they didn't know because sometimes politicians jurors have other ideas than architects think they have so that's a building under construction and I think it's gonna be spectacular because the public spaces on the top which are meeting rooms there's a cafe there is a restaurant there's a lounge you'll get the best view of the Pyrenees I think no one will ever see the Pyrenees anywhere except in Toulouse and my other project in France is here probably one of the most beautiful cities in the world nice 19th century city and the project calls for a large the entire block next to the station so I you know I love these forms I love these forms that collide just like in my drawings that that explode that are not kind of rationalized in anyway so here it is you see the whole block there's the 19th century railway station on one side is a huge highway and that's where you arrive and it's a you know that it's it's a the poorer part of town but it's only five seconds from the richest part of town so why not create here something really very dramatic very interesting a building that has many many programs including auditorium for the public it's not just private activities restaurants a building that brings you back to the station enter that highway overpass in a way that it will change the nature of this city and create I think a very spectacular building very spectacular place you'll see from the highway on the upper level you know in speed so it has to work you know in different scales of speed and again a building that there I do have five other competitors you probably know who they are because they were all French and every one of them had arches couches buildings that of stuck a station with arches arches you know and it's that's vignola so anyway you never know what what people really want and it's on the construction as well future one of the greatest crimes I said was the Holocaust and and the atomic bomb but the other third greatest crime is the enslavement of Africa and of Africans so I had a chance to work with a genius Richard Leakey he basically invented he and his family his father and mother invented paleoanthropology in Kenya to discovering where do we come from where is our DNA come from we all come from Kenya we all come from Turkana a particular desert today not then causes of years ago so he asked me to design a building with him for the origins of who we are why do we come from Africa when did pigment you know wasn't it the pigment come in two phases it's so recent we think there's black and white and green so just nothing there it is through Conor Salt Lake it's it's a mystery it's it's a most beautiful place in the world it's two hours by plane from Nairobi if you ever have a chance you really will at home because I didn't feel foreign I didn't feel foreign even though I don't it's for healy it's it's feels yeah this is humanity and nature magazine I mean my son nor the scientists told me if you appear once on nature magazine you consider the genius there were at least twenty covers of nature magazine all of the Leakey's you know the Lucy scull Turkana boy the earliest tools and I found something about the tools that inspired me because I saw them because they has a collection of tools right there that's where they all come from thousands of years ago and one of the scientists from Oxford is pointed on me said this was the greatest invention of mankind said why because I always thought okay they've got a sharp point no no because someone had to that idea of a sharp point in their head in order to find a rock that they could hit with another rock to produce a sharp point Wow so there it is very there is it it's a kind of place you know of exhibitions of pilgrimage in the middle of this desert I want to show you this this is a 24-hour clock imagine this is 24 hours the earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago Big Ben for Big Bang 14 billion years ago at zerozero was the formation of the earth let's say four point six Bell meteorites would at 3 a.m. origin of life at 4 o'clock oldest fossils at 5:30 6 6 o'clock was iron formations single-celled algae were like you know at near 3 o'clock sexual reproduction began at 6 p.m. seaweed 8:28 jellyfish 8:48 land plants 952 dinosaurs at 10:56 we are less than 2 minutes from midnight and think about evolution and I thought about it a lot because when I opened the fundamental physics building Lord Reiss one of the greatest scientists in the world the Royal astronomer of the UK said to me mr. Lewis Kent we are now entering in the era of posthuman and I said what he says yes posthuman and he's an 8-year old man man so woody me post him when thinking three hundred years from now four hundred years from no no no we said within sixty years we will be we will be transformed we will not be human we will be post so there is that there is the the sketches based on Africa based on discovering with the spaces from inside of the tool inside of the insider that thought of the point that something is there a point in order to to to cut something else and of course it's about Africa Africa is the continent of the future and here are some sketches because it's really in the works sketches of a variety of spaces which don't have a lot of you know it's desert environment so it's not going to be air conditioning it's gonna be done in a very very different way in order to be built but again the drama you know maybe one dinosaur maybe even a plastic dinosaur who knows maybe they will not even have the original stones but it's just the kind of place to come to and to kind of discover the amazing sense of what is the human what is the human being where are we and where are we going okay let me end here because I'm going too far this is the most complicated project I ever worked on and it's New York and everybody knows where they were in 9/11 because that's the minute that the world changed we know that the world changed the world is different we travel differently we think differently of the news we think differently of global politics of nature is the day and where was I after so many years of working in the Jewish Museum I was in Berlin and I turned to Nina and some colleagues and I said what a great day for me 9/11 the Jewish Museum is opening today at seven o'clock in the evening I don't have to think of Jewish history because people can come to the museum and have their own experience they can have their own experience about what it what it means by 2:30 2:30 8:00 p.m. Berlin time to be exact then we saw the images of the destruction of World Trade Center and Pentagon the other end of the fight and an option was made the Jewish Museum is not opening to the public and it did not open for three days and I remember that that made a big impression on me that you think that history is over you think something is the past but history is actually coming projected from from the future it's not coming from the back it's coming at us from an unknown future and I suddenly realized that all history is interconnected in very very strange ways so when I luckily you know won the competition to be a master planner and that's the story in itself I drew this drawing and these are my ideas Statue of Liberty there's got to be some sense of structure 1776 Declaration of Independence Human Rights instrument the first one ever there's gonna be the bedrock with not just the bedrock with the footprints but the Ben Iraq where it happened and the story wall on the right there's gotta be the foundations themselves to be revealed to the public so the kind of sketch of my ideas and also you can see put the buildings as far away from the center don't build anything in the center I was surprised at all the architects and their great architects suggested building large-scale projects in the center of they're off the project because a piece of real estate no one ever declared us to be anything but a piece of real estate which has many stakeholders got the families of the victims who are in the thousands believe me in the tens of thousands sisters brothers uncles aunts cousins in the tens of thousands or the 3,000 people from 90 different countries who perished Port Authority owns the land 7,000 engineers and architects just think about it's their organization of 7,000 engineers architects directed by the governor of New York and New Jersey two very powerful governors streets of New York are owned and organized by city of their mayor of New York controls the streets of the Port Authority path train authorities their own and subway authorities their own authorities so you know you have to bring a consensus to a body that is and of course developers private developers with their own architects who have their own agendas how do you bring in a democracy and I are a great believer in democracy this complex complex group together and I show you this not out of vanity it's not of vanity but I want to show you that it's a project that is has been now less in this almost every day in the news and controversial controversial because people wanted to rebuild it to towers Mayor Giuliani whatever just low buildings no we don't we don't remember a thing many people said leave the site as it is don't do anything for the next 50 years so that we you know are sure what it meant but no I I was determined as a New Yorker that this site should come back to life but in a different way with public space at its center and out of the 16 acres is very small site 16 acres 8 acres in my plan which you can see already today it's public space that to me it's like the key there's a early sketch the latest rendering you can see here also the Performing Arts Center which is on the construction tower number two which is coming but we already have 1776 the first our freedom tower we have tower number three Tower number four we have the visitor center we have the footprints and we have the museum underground which was also a big an important I show you this as a diagram because it's pretty easy to design a building but very hard to design foundation 75 feet below you have to design all the foundations you know the trains were running almost three two days later after the attack the trains path trains and subways were running because otherwise New York can't live to create the infrastructure to be able to really design foundations for buildings that may not even be happening in your life timing ah I learned something that why most city plans master plans wind up in museums they're never built there's also nice drawings but the plan is never realized so that's the idea how to realize a plan how to be practical don't make mega structures divide the plan into you know relatively regular buildings that can be implemented as the economy as we want to build them and by the way you can see the transportation system which is the key actually their whole site I was able to preserve the fragments of the disaster as well I think it's important that the memory of the site be alive of course in the visitors center and most importantly the slurry wall this is the foundation remember seeing this picture I remember the ramp that was here and and I was in that room in a skyscraper next door with you know Norman Foster and Richard Meier all my friends looking down on a dim November day and somebody from the Port Authority said does anybody want to go there and everybody said no this is a best view that we can possibly have off the site you look straight down at it one Liberty Plaza but I said and you know we said like we want to go and we got these cheap galoshes their umbrellas you know and I tell you my life changed as I touched that you know it's it's not a sentimental thing it changed I asked me and I called the office it was still in Berlin they've been working we've been working on you know planning doing different things buildings right it says forget about it nothing to do with these buildings it's about this place it's about the spirit of this place and it's about this wall and it's a foundation it still supports the site you know but it's very difficult to have a foundation exposed most foundations that we see are buried now in Rome broken foundations and in Jerusalem and in Athens you can see a foundation when it's over but to ticket foundation because you need a load on top of the foundation to make the foundation work right you need the lower heavy load but if you have no load if you want to show it it takes a lot of Engineering it's very complex but I had friends in the Port Authority would like tidy ax show the wall because that's the only thing that you see of the actual attack that's what we saw that we should have never seen and we should never been at the bedrock level because that's only where construction workers are and by the way that on the other side of that wall it's a dam on the other side is the Hudson River all the pressures of the Atlantic Ocean if that wall had fallen and think about it we were in our pockets because everything would have been flooded by the power of of water so the wall is strangely a testament to building in New York and I was very pleased when the Pope Francis came to New York not long ago he didn't speak in Central Park where people thought he was going to be speaking Central Park or it's going to be speaking and you know 42nd Street Times Square he chose to speak at the wall and I thought that was very moving because they're all the leaders you know ecumenical leaders religious leaders from across the world speaking and I was very moved that that the wall communicates something that words cannot really communicate the Solidarity of people across religion across nations across ideologies it's about architecture and of course the footprints beautiful design of Michael Arad but I proposed the water in the competition which was very you know it there was a headline front page of the post Lee Biscayne is bringing Niagara Falls to New York ha ha ha but you know it's good to bring water to New York because it's a lot of you know a lot of hardscape and you want to have a sense of of nature and also of the sound of water which screens the very very noisy streets of Manhattan and I showed this the story wall and the fact that the footprints go all the way down to bedrock I thought the most I think for that because that space is so expensive everybody wants to be under this place right you don't need they you know they they said you can make a memorial with the footprints which is only this deep only two meters you know you don't need the depth I said you need the depth to orient people to the depth of New York and also to the scale of the destruction and to the center of public space and of course this is now really you know we work and live there it's it's millions of visitors the most visited site in the United States by far the museum to one of you know many millions of people but you can read the name and and that public space is open and I think that's what I thought you know I thought of my parents I grew up you know my parents were working in factories in the sweatshops of New York my mother and my father in the printer printing sweatshops I said what would they get from the site they would never be in those beautiful buildings because they they're not going to be working for containers then they don't have that's not them most New Yorkers aren't gonna be on those buildings what does New York is what do people get they should get a sense of openness a sense of the view tour the Hudson a sense of a place that gives hope in the beauty of New York which is beautiful but also a testament to the day that fateful day so that's that's how I thought about and there's you know this space is really very active you know it's it's needed badly in New York and I did I actually went against Port Authority by suggesting another public space because there's never enough public space so I created what I call the wedge of light it's a it's a space defined by 8:46 a.m. when the first tower was struck and 10:28 when the second tower collapsed you can see it here is defined by the center of the path terminal central skylight and it's defined by the not yet existing edge southern edge of tower number 2 which you see the foundation here that's going to be a very dramatic space and by the way here you see it here you see from the looking towards Broadway because there's a lot of people coming from robbery and on this September 11th that whole skylight opened it's amazing actually it just opened and the light fell because there's a sunny day just exactly an ended line and I thought that's exactly right that it's a memorial in the light it's not a memorial with a sign it's just a light of the place and you can see it here you can see you can see that that slight twist of of the of the center of the path terminal you see the buildings are standing in a grid but they're also spending torqued towards the kind of circle which I consider kind of the torch and you can see how much space there is given that we have 10 million square feet of office space we have five million square feet of culture 2 million square feet of of infrastructure the density of this site is the density of the whole of downtown of a major American city take all the Baltimore all of Denver it's here but it doesn't look at that's that that's that was my intent public space streets people have access to be together that's the key and culture which is available and there is the rendering how it will look and look it's it's pretty close already to to being there it'll still take time tower number two we don't know when Performing Arts Center under construction maybe five more years maybe several more years but it's there and I end here where I started you know because I was an immigrant from Poland to New York and I had one of those visions you know I was in a ship one of the last immigrants to come by ship because was cheaper later to fly to Kennedy and I did you know my mother woke me up as you know get up get up you're gonna see New York my sister and I was standing on the deck of that ship like like in those movies and it's unfathomable what you see you see the skyline of New York which is kind of something amazing seemed from the water it's kind of an impossible dream even if you've seen postcards or movies or New York just seeing it but what people can do in a democracy and the Statue of Liberty which I passed I had no idea Emma Lazarus wrote the words give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free it is about democracy it is about America it's about liberty it's about freedom we live in a time of attractions to dictators attractions to anti-democratic forces this is something else this is America as it really is thank you [Applause]

Channel: SCI-Arc Media Archive

Views: 9,152

Rating: 4.9764705 out of 5

Keywords: Daniel Libeskind, Architectural drawing, Architectural models, Architectural representation, Museum design, Holocaust memorials, Residential towers, Master plans, SCI-Arc, Southern California Institute of Architecture, Lectures, Architecture

Id: A71wkdqtKAc

Length: 67min 29sec (4049 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2017