Jewish Museum Berlin - Daniel Libeskind

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

MUSIC!

DANEL LIBESKIND

DECONSTRUCTIVIST?

JEWISH MUSEUM BERLIN

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

A Childhood Propelled by Music

BIOGRAPHY BEFORE HE BECAME AN ARCHITECT Libeskind was a virtuoso musician at a young age before giving up music to become an architect.

Daniel Libeskind (born May 12, 1946) is a Polish-American architect, artist, professor and set designer. He founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect.

EDUCATION He studied a number of disciplines (music, painting, mathematics) in Israel and in the USA, graduating from Cooper Union in New York with a degree in architecture in 1970.

After graduating from Cooper Union in 1970, Libeskind studied the history and theory of architecture at Essex University in Colchester, England, earning a master's degree there in the early 1970s.

HOW DID HE BECAME KNOWN TO THE WORLD? Libeskind’s international reputation as an architect was solidified when in 1989 he won the competition to build an addition to the Berlin Museum that would house the city museum’s collection of objects related to Jewish history.

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

UNDERSTANDING HIM DEEPER

His approach to design is what he calls unorthodox : Ideas can come from any little thing !!

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culture

“Buildings have hearts and souls, just as cities do. We can feel the memory and meaning in a building since the spiritual and cultural longing it evokes” His design ideology of weaving together time, memory, and architecture, is best reflected in one of his works- the Jewish Museum, Berlin.

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music & architecture

“Architecture is not just an intellectual or abstract exercise, it is an emotional experience just as music is. "To be able to conduct music you have to be very precise but you also have to give freedom for it to be performed by others. That is in many ways identical to architecture. " Music and architecture he says, have to register in the soul of the listener or onlooker, not just as notes or drawings.

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

HIS PERSONAL DIMENSIO NS NECESSARY OXYGEN

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

OPTIMISM OVER PESSIMISM EXPRESSIVE OVER NEUTRAL RADICAL VS CONSERVATIVE EMOTIONAL VS COOL INEXPLICABLE VS UNDERSTOOD HAND VS COMPUTER

C0MPLEX VS SIMPLE POLITICAL VS EVASIVE REAL VS SIMULATED UNEXPECTED VS HABITUAL RAW VS REFINED POINTED VS BLUNT MEMORABLE VS FORGETTABLE COMMUNICATIVE VS MUTE RISKY VS SAFE SPACE VS FASHION DEMOCRATIC VS AUTHORITARIAN

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

THE JEWISH MUSEUM , GERMANY

Opened to the public in 2001, exhibits the social, political and cultural history of the Jews in Germany from the fourth century to the present The journey through the Jewish Museum Berlin begins in the Kollegienhaus, the Baroque building next to Libeskind's extension, and former Prussian courthouse designed by Philip Gerlach in 1735.

World War II took a heavy toll on this district of Berlin through aerial bombing. The Kollegienhaus itself was heavily damaged, with only the exterior walls left standing following the war. The context of the site was very much a part of the architect's overall design concept, as well as the way in which it factored into progression through the building.

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

The museum originally opened closed due to Nazi rule

LOOKING AT THE PAST "JEWISH MUSEUM"

a group vowed to restore it.

a m e r

1938 1933

va i ned

c an t

1975

new design conceived

1988 1989 competition result declaration 1999 january, completion 2001 reopened

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

2.

DESIGN OF EXPAN SION IS BASED OFF

The meaning of the Holocaust must be integrated into the consciousness and memory of the city of Berlin

1.

3.

The inability to understand the history of Berlin without understanding the enormous contributions made by its Jewish citizens;

for its future, the City of Berlin and the country of Germany must acknowledge the erasure of Jewish life in its history.

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

THROUGH THE MUSEUM

The visitor enters the Baroque Kollegienhaus and then descends by stairway through the dramatic Entry Void, into the underground. The existing building is tied to the new extension, through the underground, thus preserving the contradictory autonomy of both the old and new structures on the surface. The descent leads to three underground axial routes, each of which tells a different story. The first leads to a dead end – the Holocaust Tower. The second leads out of the building and into the Garden of Exile and Emigration, remembering those who were forced to leave Berlin The third and longest, traces a path leading to the Stair of Continuity, then up to the exhibition spaces of the museum, emphasizing the continuum of history.

THE HOLOCAUST TOWER

THE VOID

01

THE AXES

02

THE GARDEN OF EXILE AND EMIGRATION THE STAIR OF CONTINUITY

03 04 05

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

THE VOID Voids cut through the zigzagging plan of the expansion to create a space that embodies absence. It is a straight line whose impenetrability becomes the central focus around which exhibitions are organised.

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

WHAT DO THEY REPRESENT?

The three axes represent the major experiences in German Judaism: exile, holocaust, and continuity. The first two axes run off of the main axis, embody the feeling that they are closing up as one follows them to their respective termination points, as the floors of these paths are inclined with the ceilings remaining constant, invoking more uncomfortably still.

Their respective dead-ends are also burdened with emotional and philosophical references, as the architect immediately calls to attention the physical and psychological fates of Jewish Berliners during the Holocaust. The main, third axis allows a point of escape, as well as symbolizes the attempt for the city to move on from its heinous past.

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

THE HOLOCAUST TOWER THE HOLOCAUST AXIS The first axis that we will discuss is the Holocaust Axis, which terminates at a black door, behind which lies the Holocaust ToweR. he tower is representative of the exterminated victims of the Holocaust, and is several storeys tall, forming a pentagonal plan, which is enclosed, unheated, and entirely empty, with the exception of a cleverly hidden fire stair and a small window at its top. A sharp beam of light enters the space from above, and the sounds of the city are faintly audible as one occupies this physical dead-end space.

Minimal connection to the outside world is available from here, and one is left to retrace their steps back to the three underground axes from which they came.The black door also acts as a foreshadowing device for the experience it guards: allowing neither visual nor physical continuity to the space which exists behind it.

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

The tower is representative of the exterminated victims of the Holocaust, and is several stories tall, forming a pentagonal plan, which is enclosed, unheated, and entirely empty, with the exception of a cleverly hidden fire stair and a small window at its top. A sharp beam of light enters the space from above, and the sounds of the city are faintly audible as one occupies this physical deadend space.

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

AXIS OF EXILE

GARDEN OF EXILE AND EMIGRATION The second of the two dead-end axes is the Axis of Exile, which terminates at a glass door. behind which lies the Garden of Exile and Emigration.

This termination point is representative of Jews who fled Germany and the false sense of freedom they experienced. The garden is comprised of forty-nine concrete pillars, arranged in a 7 x 7 grid. Forty-eight of the pillars represent the birth of Israel in the year 1948 and are filled with the soil of Berlin. The central forty-ninth pillar is filled with the soil of Israel and represents Berlin itself.

This garden, however, open to the surrounding city visually, is, like the Holocaust Tower, a termination point. Although one feels freed from the roots of the underground axes of the museum, they are not free to go and need to return back into the uncomfortable spaces from which they came.

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

THE STAIR OF CONTINUITY THERE IS ONLY ONE AXIS THAT LEADS TO THE MUSEUM AND ESCAPES FROM THE HARSH, DARK, UNCOMFORTABLE SPACE OF THE THREE AXES: THE AXIS OF CONTINUITY, WHICH LEADS TO THE GRAND STAIR OF CONTINUITY .

“The movement up into the museum extension is a classic play of scale and light, moving the subject from a dark and tightly enclosed space into a large, naturally lit one - signifying the subjects' escape from the underground, and the continuation of Berlin's history from the dark, and murky depths of its past.

Unlike the previous two axes - both of which terminate behind a door in some symbolic space - there is no barrier between the Axis of Continuity and the grand stair that leads into the museum - this path is connected both visually and physically to the outside city. As one ascends these stairs and up from underground, they are able to view the city through the dramatic sliced windows of the extension's façade, and continue through the museum's permanent collections.

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

CONTINUITY

EXILE

DEATH

CAUTIOUS

TIRESOME

SUFFOCATED

EXPOSED

HOPEFUL

FEARFUL

RELENTLESS

CONFINED

BE-LITTING

ALONE

STUDIO LIBESKIND

https://libeskind.com/

BUILDING ENVELOPE

MATERIALS USED

1

The building is made up of a reinforced concrete structure. Due to the use of cast in place concrete, and a facade monotonously covered in zinc, the building has a sense of gravitas within the site; stereotonic 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.

FASCADE WINDOWS

2

One of the most notable and recognizable aspects regarding the façade of the museum extension are the strip windows that slash through the zinc panels, projecting dramatic displays of light onto the walls of the building's interior.

FASCADE 3

SLITS

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

STUDIO LIBESKIND https://libeskind.com/

MICROMEGAS

1979

not intended purely as a graphic device but is related to the concept of time.

"An architectural drawing," Libeskind has written, "is as much a prospective unfolding of future possibilities as it is a recovery of a particular history, to whose intentions it testifies and whose limits it always challenges. In any case a drawing is more than the shadow of an object, more than a pile of lines, more than a resignation to the inertia of convention." In this print, Time Sections, projected fragments of architectural elements explode across the surface of the paper, illustrating no single moment but alluding to events in both the past and the future.