Jewish Museum Berlin Analysis

‘BETWEEN THE LINES’ The Jewish Museum, Berlin Daniel Libeskind

n+ hafra son S t o g Mar orey Stin C

Conc in Arc epts and P hitec ture rinciples

The Washington University in St. Louis Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design

“The official name of the project is ‘Jewish Museum’ but I have named it ‘Between the Lines’ because for me it is about two 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.”

- Daniel Libeskind, 1998

history

historical context cultural context daniel libeskind parti order:disorder

form

site & approach connected: disconnected welcome:not-welcome order

chosen:not-chosen germaness:jewishness identity:lack of identity emboiment tectonic apature

open:closed visible:invisible dark:light dispair:hope

historical context 5 6

In 1933 Hitler’s Nazi Party took power in Germany.

This eventually lead to the institutionalized genocide of the jewish people in europe. Of the 9 million jews that lived in europe at the time, only 3 million survived, many were mass murdered by gas, while others died of starvation, disease, and hopelessness.

Jewish presence in Berlin dates back to 13th century, and while they were not always accepted within normal society, during the years of the Weimar republic jewish prominance perculated into all sectors of society from science to entertainment, business, and literature. Jewish people were primarily secular and considered themselves German over Jewish. And yet, during the guise of WWII germans allowed their collectivization, and deportation to take them to their graves.

After the holocaust, it was assumed that all jews left in Berlin would emmigrate elsewhere. That was in fact not the case. To date there remains an active Jewish precense in Berlin, with 7 active synagogues and many memorials to pay tribute to millions who suffered as a result of the holocaust.

The Jewish Museum in Berlin is both a tribute celebrating the accomplishments of the Jews in Berlin, as well as a memorial remembering what sahll never again occur.

berlin

The current Jewish Museum Berlin is an exhibition of the social, cultural, and political history of Jews in Germany from the 4th century to current day.

The museum originally opened in 1933.

By 1938 it had closed due to Nazi rule. The museum sat vacant up until 1975 when a group vowed to restore it. A competition was held to design the expansion of the Museum which reopened in 2001.

The design of the expansion is based off of three conceptions.

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the inability to understand the complex history of berlin without acknowlging the vast contribution to the nation culturally economically, and intellectually by Jewish People a necessity to integrate the significance of the holocaust physically and spiritually into the fabric of Berlin by acknowledging the void of Jewish life in berlin, the history of berlin and europe can have a human future

cultural context

daniel libeskind 9 10

Daniel Libeskind is an American architect, born in Poland. He immigrated to New York City in 1959. He attended The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art where he received his professional degree in architecture, then went to the University of Essex for a post graduate degree in the History and Theory of Architecture in 1972.

interest and involvement in philosophy, art, music, literature, theater and film.

Libeskind established his own practice in 1989 out of Berlin and has since designed many major cultural buildings worldwide.

Libeskind’s architecture reflects his

He continues to commit to expanding the expectations of architecture and urbanism within society and is devoted to making sure his architecture and urban designs are crafted with perceptible human energy - they attempt to speak to the larger cultural community in which they are built.

Royal Ontario Museum Toronto, 2007

Jewish Contemporary Museum San Fransisco, 2008

Crystals at City Center Los Vegas, 2009

"An irrational and invisible matrix"

-Daniel Libeskind, 1995

parti 13 14

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germaness

The form is made up of two linear structures: one zig-zag the other straight. Where the two lines intersect, a void is created extending from the ground level to the roof. This expressive form is used to explain the Jewish lifestyle before, during, and after the Holocaust. This museum acts as a beacon that helps to establish and secure an identity within Berlin for Jewish people that was lost during the reign of the NAZI party. The intention of the voids is to express the feelings of absence, emptiness, and invisibility of the dehumanization that the Jewish people experienced during this time.

Two buildings sit on the site. The first a Baroque Kollegienhaus, the other a post-modern abstraction. One decends into the firstbuilding to reach the second, however on the exterior they materialize as two seperate entities. This connection, or lack there of, preserves “the contradictory autonomy of both the old building and the new building on the surface, while binding the two together in the depth of time and space.“ This formal organization of building mimincs the complicated relationship of Jews in Germany

order;disorder 15 16

disconnected: connected

existing expansion

connection 17 18

The museum is located on Lindenstraβe within the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough of berlin. Its location is about 2.5 km south west of Brandenburg Gate, the city’s center. The site of the museum was originally the home to the Prussion court of Justice which was constructed in 1735. In 1960 it was converted into a museum for the city of Berlin.

There is not a formal entrance to the expansion of the Jewish Museum, instead you enter from the old building. Since the Libeskind addition is the icon of the museum, it causes confusion for visitors whom expect the to enter there.

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welcome

Voids cut through the zigzagging plan of the expansino to create a space that embodies absence.

It is a straight line whose impenetrability becomes the central focus around which exhibitions are organized.

Libeskind creates a promenade

form 21 22

level 2: courtyard/cafe

permanent exhibition

level 1: permanent exhibition

ground level: memory void

lower level: undergroudn axes

entrance/lobby

permanent exhibition

(overall) organization

permanent exhibition permanent exhibition

holocaust tower garden of exile

lower level: underground axes

garden of exile learning center

holocaust tower

(axes) organization 23 24

axis of contunuity

axis of emmigration

axis of holocaust

Libeskind creates a promenade that follows the “zig-zag� formation of the building for visitors to walk through and experience the spaces within.

In order to move from one side of the museum to the other, visitors must cross one of the 60 bridges that open onto this void.

(overall) circulation 25 26

start of Permanent exhibit Level Two: Permanent Exhibition Level One: Permanent Exhibition Ground Level: Eric F. Ross Gallery & Memory Void

Lower Level entrance

Rafeal Roth Learning Center Holocaust Tower

Garden of exile

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The plan of the basement level spatially represents three different experiences Jews went through as a result of the holocaust.

As a guest experiences the museum they must endure the anxiety of hiding and losing the sense of direction before coming to a cross roads of three routes. The three routes represent the Jewish experience in Germany through: the continuity within German history, emigration from Germany, and the Holocaust.

(axes) circulation 27 28

decent

continuity emmigration

exile

death

(emobiment) physical

decent

long passage

compression

expansion

washed light

One of the most critical factors driveing the form of this is museum is the relationship between building and person.

This museum is made up of a series of controled sequences that play with spatial compression and expansion. Along the zig-zag of ‘jewish-ness’ the passage is sized to the human scale. That said, it doesn;’t make the space comfortable; the space is cool in termperature, the lights are bright and the walls are a sterile white, a little reflective in quailty. Instead one feels unwelcome, and rushes ahead.

Eventually a person enters a void, an inbetween the lines experience. Here the space is sectionally expansive with cold concrete walls rising 60 feet above your head. At the top, light washes into the chamber. One feels small in this type of space, but it also allows the recognition that there is more to this world than the individual. Although never explicitly decreed by the architect or museum, these voids have a godliness and give the sense of a higher power through the use of massive scale and natural lighting as the only ornamentation in the space.

Overall, this building provides a series of different spaces that effect the emotional journey to the individual.

(emobiment) emotional

cautious fearFUL

tiresome relentless

suffocating confined

exposed be-littleing

hopeful alone

This building is about emotional embodiment as much as it is phyical embidiment. The building physically expresses the history of the jewish people in Berlin, and as such, the spatial sequence attempts to recreate some of the emotions vital to understanding this complicated history. Decent into the ground provokes fear, long passages throughout the building invoke confusion, confined narow spaces feel isolated and deprivating, slanted walls and sharp corners express an anger, and most of all an expression of hope that the viewer experiences in those sacred moment of void washed with soft light.

Visible:Invisible 33 34

The buidling is made up of a reinfocred concrete structure. Due to the use of cast in place concrete, and a facade monotonously coovered in zinc, the building has a sense of gravitas within the site; sterotonic in quality.

Zinc is the material that clads all of the expansion building. It is a material that has a long tradition in the architectural history of Berlin. Over time, this untreated alloy of titanium and zinc will oxidize causing a change color more blue in tone through the exposure to light and to the weather.

(apertures) light:dark 35 36

The narrow slits of apatures along the facade of the building follow a precise matrix derived by Libeskind from plotting the addresses of prominent German and Jewish citizens from prewar Berlin. He connects these points to form an “irrational and invisible� cluster of lines The randomess of these apatures helps to hide the interior purpose of the building and does not clearly help to delineate its scale or sturcture. Instead, they invoke a curiousty and express the testament of scarring the building represents.

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People are skeptical about the history of Berlin. Those very people, who never wanted to see that history, find it extremely difficult to accept the museum. It is difficult to address this issue, and that is why it is so very important to do so.

Daniel Libeskind, 1999

a monument for a people?

a scar through history?

SOURCES