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Daniel Libeskind | Architekt Daniel Libeskind AG | Zürich, Switzerland
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Daniel Libeskind:
Inspirations

Daniel Libeskind

From his roots in postwar Poland,
Daniel Libeskind has risen to
become one of the world’s
most recognized architects and
designers, as well asa prominent
contemporary thinker. His ascent
had many interesting turns.

After relocating to Israel, Libeskind’s family came
to the U.S. on one of the last immigration boats
in 1959, and he became a U.S. citizen in 1965.
Libeskind was a musical virtuoso as a child, even
winning a highly coveted America-Israel Cultural
Foundation scholarship. However, as a young adult,
he shifted hisfocus to architecture and earned his
architecture degree from the Cooper Union for the
Advancement of Science and Art in New York City
in 1970 and his postgraduate degree in History and
Theory of Architecture at the School of Comparative
Studies at Essex University in England two
years later.
After many years as an architecture professor
and theorist, Libeskind finally saw his first designrealized at the age of 52—the 1998 opening of the
Felix Nussbaum Haus in Osnabrück, Germany―
and, by 1999 he gained international prominence for
his design of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. He most
recently won international attention and respect
when he was named master planner for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site in New York City
in 2003. Libeskind’s work was recognized in
TimeMagazine’s “The Best of 1998 Design Awards.”
Libeskind and his wife, Nina, founded
Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 in Berlin, and upon
winning the World Trade Center design competition,
Studio Daniel Libeskind (SDL) moved its headquarters to its current location in New York City—two
blocks south of the original World Trade Center

site in lower Manhattan. In 2003, they also openedArchitekt Daniel Libeskind AG (ADL) in Bern,
Switzerland to build the Westside project in
Bern-Brünnen and also to handle their growing
European business. Relocated to Zürich in 2004,
this branch now employs between 10 and 40 people.
Libeskind also maintains an office in Milan, Italy.
Libeskind and his firm have created a wide variety
of works, ranging from small- to large-scale projects.
Theirrealized work includes the creation of public
and private spaces, as well as objects and projects
with information-technology focus. Notably, the firm
has garnered international attention for its striking
museums and spectacular urban designs. Libeskind
often provides the initial artistic sketch in ink to his
design teams, who then work with CAD/BIM and
traditional 3D models to realize hisvision. With his
extraordinary designs, he has become an icon to
the next generation of architects, as well as to those
who are creating the futures of cities and culture.
..............
Fundamental to my thinking and motivation is that
buildings and urban projects are crafted with perceptible human energy and that they speak to the larger
cultural community in which they are built.”
—DanielLibeskind, Architekt Daniel Libeskind AG,
Zürich, Switzerland
..............

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Daniel Libeskind | Architekt Daniel Libeskind AG | Zürich, Switzerland

Libeskind’s voracious love of the arts imbues his
innovative and symbolic designs with the philosophy,
art, literature, and music that most inspire him.
Libeskind’s process is at once illuminating and
mysterious. Heruminates, “How do I know what to
design? People often ask me that, and I’m never
quite sure how to answer, because my approach
is less than orthodox, and even I don’t always
understand the process. Sometimes my thoughts
are triggered by a piece of music or poem, or simply
by the way light falls on a wall. My design philosophy
is based in my view that architecture itself is communicative. Each...