The Jewish Museum Berlin, which 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, explicitly presenting and integrating, for the first time in postwar Germany, the repercussions of the Holocaust. The new building is housed next to the site of the original Prussian Court of Justice building which was completed in 1735 now serves as the entrance to the new building. Daniel Libeskind’s design, which was created a year before the Berlin Wall came down, was based on three insights:  it is impossible to…

The National Holocaust Monument, established through the National Holocaust Monument Act by the Government of Canada, will ensure a permanent, national symbol that will honor and commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and recognize Canadian survivors. The Monument stands on a .79 acre site at the intersection of Wellington and Booth Streets within the historic LeBreton Flats in Ottawa, symbolically located across from the Canadian War Museum. 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. The Monument…

Located at the site of Wuhan’s old steelworks, Studio Libeskind’s design is a sweeping ark-like structure that is hoisted above the surrounding plaza by two steel and glass structures. The gravity defying form is clad in geometric steel panels, reminiscent of the industries’ past.  Once inside, visitors climb the main staircase that connects to the exhibition spaces above where they are divided into four themes about the accomplishments and ideas surrounding the life of Zhang Zhidong. The exhibition also includes various collaborations with local artists who explore aspects of the differing themes through installations and interactive works of art. On…

The extension to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), now named the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, is situated at one of the most prominent intersections in downtown Toronto. It is the largest Museum in Canada and attracts more than a million visitors a year. Its new name is derived from the building’s five intersecting metal-clad volumes, which are reminiscent of crystals—inspired by the crystalline forms in the ROM’s mineralogy galleries. Libeskind created a structure of organically interlocking prismatic forms turning this important corner of Toronto, and the entire museum complex, into a luminous beacon. The design succeeds at inviting glimpses up, down,…

The Imperial War Museum North (IWMN) in Manchester, England, tells the story of how war has affected the lives of British and the Commonwealth citizens since 1914. The design concept is a globe shattered into fragments and then reassembled. The interlocking of three of these fragments—representing earth, air, and water—comprise the building’s form. The Earth Shard forms the museum space, signifying the open, earthly realm of conflict and war; the Air Shard serves as a dramatic entry into the museum, with its projected images, observatories and education spaces; and the Water Shard forms the platform for viewing the canal, complete…

Studio Libeskind’s extension to the Denver Art Museum is the Studio’s first building to reach completion in the USA.  Silhouetted against the majestic backdrop of the Rocky Mountains, Libeskind’s design consists of a series of geometric volumes inspired by the peaks and valleys of the mountain range.  A sharply angled cantilevered section juts across the street, pointing towards the existing Museum by Milanese architect Gio Ponti, which first opened in 1971. The Frederic C. Hamilton Building, as the 146,000-square-foot Denver Art Museum extension is named, is clad in an innovative new surface with 9,000 titanium panels that cover the building’s surface…

Now the official museum of the German Armed Forces, the Dresden Museum of Military History has assumed varying and contradictory identities across its history. The building began its life as an armory, before becoming the Saxon Army Museum, followed by a stint as a Nazi military museum, then a Soviet and East German Museum. Uncertain of the institution’s role in the reunified state, the German government closed the museum and launched an international competition to redesign the structure. Studio Libeskind was selected as design architect for the extension in 2001, after presenting a bold design outside the competition guidelines. The…

Studio Libeskind completed this innovative convention center in time for the advent of cultural and diplomatic activities in 2015, when this small medieval town transformed into the European Capital of Culture. The City of Mons conceived the Congres Centre as a new architectural landmark, a key element in a plan for economic revitalization, and as a connector between the old and the new. From the light- steel viewing platform at the top, a visitor can see the 17th-century Beffroi tower, a UNESCO Heritage Site of Belgium, in the historic center of town, and a new train station designed by Santiago…

Daniel Libeskind was invited to return to the Felix Nussbaum Haus in Osnabrück, Germany, his first completed project, to design an extension 13 years after the museum’s opening. Attached to the Kunstgeschichtliche Museum and connected to the Felix Nussbaum Haus by a glass bridge, the new building transforms the existing buildings into a cohesive complex by acting as a gateway. Studio Libeskind employed grey plaster and anthracite frames to harmonizes with the existing buildings and create a seamless ensemble. The extension appears less as an additional element as it does a prism from which the original Libeskind-designed building is refracted from…

Dedicated to the oeuvre of a Jewish artist put to death at Auschwitz, the Felix Nussbaum Museum is an extension to the Cultural History Museum in Osnabrück, Germany, where Felix Nussbaum was born in 1904. As well as displaying paintings created by Nussbaum, the museum presents changing exhibitions focusing on the themes of racism and intolerance. With sudden breaks in its pathways, unpredictable intersections, claustrophobic spaces, and dead ends, the structure of the building reflects the Nussbaum’s predicament as a Jewish painter in Germany before WWII. The museum is composed of three interconnected structures, each referencing a different temporality in…

The Graduate Student Centre for the London Metropolitan University is a striking addition to the bustling block on London’s Holloway Road. Composed of three intersecting volumes, clad with embossed stainless steel panels for a shining and ever-changing surface, the Graduate Center houses a lecture theater, seminar rooms, staff offices and a café for the university’s graduate students. The interiors are filled with natural light by way of large windows of geometrical cuts and slashes. The Centre serves not only as a facility to enhance the staff and student experience, but acts as a major gateway to the University on Holloway…

Located in one of the oldest parts of Copenhagen in Denmark, the Danish Jewish Museum is housed in a former 17th-century boathouse and library built by King Christian IV. Studio Libeskind designed the new interior space, while preserving the historic building. Visitors enter into a dynamic and exhilarating structure which offers a seamless organization of the artifacts and the path of the visitor. The entire building has been conceived as an adventure, both physical and spiritual in tracing the lineaments that reveal the intersection of different histories and the dynamics of Jewish Culture and its unfolding in contemporary life. Studio…

Entitled “Voices and its Echoes,” this major expansion to Bar-Ilan University gave visual form to the school’s essential quality: respect for the secular and the sacred. Apparent in the form of the building is the interrelation between the dynamics of knowledge and the unifying role of faith. The building is made up of an “open book” perched on top of two horizontal walls like the spine of a book. The book-like form holds a 1000-seat auditorium, which is acoustically suitable for musical performances and lectures. The auditorium lighting permeates through a labyrinth of Hebrew letters that denote an ancient constellation of…

An elegant, low-tech design placed at the service of high-tech invention. This nine-story crystalline building is designed to accommodate a range of flexible environments for research and experimentation. Each space, whether self-contained or open, is unique. The dramatic central stair spirals upward with irregular twists and curves creating unexpected gathering spaces. Asymmetrical windows cut into the walls of lecture halls, classrooms and computer labs allowing for natural light to fill even the inner-most rooms of the Center. Interactive spaces flow in and around the sound stages, recording studios, screening rooms, exhibit and performance spaces, multipurpose theater, and other areas. More…

Outside Line, an installation situated in the Sports Park near the city of Uozu, Japan, was proposed as a place to contemplate the relationship between man and nature. The project was inspired by the search for a contemporary understanding of space and light, and its design was informed by a precisely determined web of conceptual, topographical relationships between objects and space, eye and mind. A red line orients itself upon an imaginary axis connecting the descending history of the Buried Forest Museum and the ascending horizon of the Tateyama mountain range.  This line creates special, ever-changing qualities of light and…

Studio Weil is a painting and sculpture studio designed and built for the American painter and sculptor Barbara Weil overlooking the sea in Port d’Andratx in Mallorca, Spain. Daniel Libeskind worked closely with Ms. Weil to create a building that not only responds to the surrounding landscape but also forms a space that complements and contrasts the artist’s work. The structure draws on Libeskind’s explorations of architectural drawing theory that were executed in the Chamberworks series, which, in turn, would form the basis for his entry in a 1997 competition to design a virtual house. Libeskind chose to deconstruct his…

Almost 13 years after Daniel Libeskind’s extension to the Jewish Museum Berlin opened to great acclaim in 2001, the museum unveiled its third collaboration with the architect, the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin. The one-floor, 25,000-square-foot building is located on the historic site of the Blumengrossmarkt (flower market) across the street from the Jewish Museum Berlin. Entitled “In-Between Spaces,” the design links the building to the museum’s other structures and open spaces both thematically and structurally. Visitors enter through a downward thrusting cube that intersects with the main rectangular hall, suggestive of the original Kollegienhaus building and the Libeskind-designed…