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…

Situated along the Weesperstraat, an important axis within the Jewish Cultural Quarter, the Dutch Holocaust Memorial of Names is adjacent to the Hermitage Museum, East of the Diaconie’s verdant Hoftuin garden and café, just a stone’s throw from the Amstel River and in close proximity to important Jewish cultural institutions such as the Jewish Historical Museum and the Portuguese Synagogue. The 1,550 square meter memorial incorporates four volumes that represent the letters in the Hebrew word לזכר meaning “In Memory of”. The volumes are arranged in a rectilinear configuration on the north-south axis of the main thoroughfare Weesperstraat and the…

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…

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…

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…

The Wheel of Conscience is a kinetic installation on display in Halifax at the Canadian Museum of Immigration on Pier 21, the gateway to Canada for a million immigrants and now a National Historic Site.  The work was inspired by the story of the M.S. St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, which the Canadian government turned away in 1939. The work is a heavy steel wheel placed vertically and housing four interlocking steel gears powered by an electric motor.  The words “hatred, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism” are applied in relief to the face of the gears. The…

This outdoor memorial in Columbus, Ohio was conceived to keep alive the memory of the millions who lost their lives in the Holocaust and the American soldiers who liberated those in concentration camps.  Studio Libeskind’s design encourages the contemplation of ideas and values that cut across generations, ethnic identity, and creed. Approaching from the Statehouse, the visitor walks on a limestone walkway between inclined, graduated stone walls and two stone benches towards a pair of large 18-ft-high bronze panels.  Embossed with a story told by a survivor of Auschwitz, the panels are also irregularly angled at their inner edges.  The…