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Daniel Libeskind and the Neo-Nazi Specter: The Resurgence of the Perpetrator

Paul B. Jaskot

in The Nazi Perpetrator: Postwar German Art and the Politics of the Right

This chapter discusses the pre-1989 history of the Berlin Jewish Museum. The meaning assigned to this structure by the government, the architect, and the local community was defined predominantly in ... More

This chapter discusses the pre-1989 history of the Berlin Jewish Museum. The meaning assigned to this structure by the government, the architect, and the local community was defined predominantly in Cold War terms, terms that decidedly shifted with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.The chapter examines the process of German reunification that makes the architecture of the Jewish Museum subject to ideological and economic pressures. It also addresses the contemporaries’ anxiety about the possibility of neo-Nazis’ fomenting new forms of violence and racism through their strategic relationship to past perpetrators. The interpretation of cultural production, including Libeskind’s building, is also given.Less

Gothic Deconstruction: Hegel, Libeskind, and the Avant-Garde

Daniel L. Purdy

in On the Ruins of Babel: Architectural Metaphor in German Thought

This chapter examines Hegel's account of architectural history as it relates to two spatial thinkers usually placed at a far remove: Henri Lefebvre and Daniel Libeskind. While Lefebvre might well be ... More

This chapter examines Hegel's account of architectural history as it relates to two spatial thinkers usually placed at a far remove: Henri Lefebvre and Daniel Libeskind. While Lefebvre might well be situated in the broad reception of Hegel within French theory, few would posit an affinity between Libeskind's architecture, particularly his Jewish Museum in Berlin, and Hegelian thought. Given Hegel's associations to a state that had given rise to Hitler and the Holocaust, it seems unlikely that a memorial to the Jewish culture in Germany would reiterate Hegel's aesthetics of building. Yet, in architecture and urban planning, the European state is often the sponsor of radical design. And given that Hegel presents several scenarios that demonstrate how grand buildings form national identity, the chapter considers how subversive architecture operates when it is aligned with official policy, especially if that policy is itself highly self-critical.Less

Decrepitude and Memory in the Landscape

Daniela Sandler

in Counterpreservation: Architectural Decay in Berlin Since 1989

This chapter turns to Daniel Libeskind's unbuilt proposal for the site of former SS barracks next to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial. This plan was commissioned by the local city ... More

This chapter turns to Daniel Libeskind's unbuilt proposal for the site of former SS barracks next to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial. This plan was commissioned by the local city government in the early 1990s. Unlike the piecemeal and localized character of the first two types of counterpreservation, the scale of this plan was very large both in size and in its potential socioeconomic impact. Moreover, the Oranienburg plan was designed by an architect who was, by then, already a rising star. On the one hand, this means that the open-ended and participatory nature of Hausprojekte and alternative cultural centers is missing. On the other hand, the poetics of counterpreservation was articulated more sharply through the architect's authorial presence. The political commitments so visible in the Hausprojekte and cultural centers were thus also present in Libeskind's socially minded program.Less

The Public Discourse of Architecture: Socializing Identities

in The Sociology of Architecture: Constructing Identities

This chapter discusses the role of architects' public discourses in positioning their buildings relative to political projects and social values. The contention between discourse and form is ... More

This chapter discusses the role of architects' public discourses in positioning their buildings relative to political projects and social values. The contention between discourse and form is illustrated through the analysis of the case of Daniel Libeskind's extension to the Jewish Museum in Berlin.Less

Libeskind in Las Vegas: Reflections on Architecture as a Luxury Commodity

Adam Sharr

in Critical Luxury Studies: Art, Design, Media

This chapter considers a project from renowned architect Daniel Libeskind: a shopping mall opened in Las Vegas in 2009, deploying what have become the architect's trademark crystalline shapes. Named ... More

This chapter considers a project from renowned architect Daniel Libeskind: a shopping mall opened in Las Vegas in 2009, deploying what have become the architect's trademark crystalline shapes. Named ‘Crystals at CityCenter’, the mall's branding derives its name and its luxury credentials from Libeskind's signature contribution. The chapter examines Crystals at CityCenter as an example of the millennial phenomenon of the ‘starchitect’-designed iconic luxury building. It explores the origins of Libeskind's architectural brand forms in the architecture of trauma in Berlin and, by contrast, the re-use of those forms in service of high-end retail on the Las Vegas Strip. In addition, the chapter argues that Crystals at CityCenter is also an example of architecture as sign — a sign of architecture referring only to itself, of architecture imagined as a luxury commodity.Less

Architecture and Commemoration: The Construction of Memorialization

in The Sociology of Architecture: Constructing Identities

This chapter examines the positioning of landmark architecture within nationalized, state–led discourses of commemoration. It focuses on Daniel Libeskind's master plan for rebuilding the Ground Zero ... More

This chapter examines the positioning of landmark architecture within nationalized, state–led discourses of commemoration. It focuses on Daniel Libeskind's master plan for rebuilding the Ground Zero site in New York City. Libeskind's symbolic attempts to position Ground Zero as a nationalized site of remembrance are explored.Less

Making Progress: Disaster Narratives and the Art of Optimism in Modern America

Kevin Rozario

in The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster

As the philosopher Martin Heidegger once revealed, there are etymological affinities linking the words building, dwelling, and thinking. The history of language, in this instance, teaches a ... More

As the philosopher Martin Heidegger once revealed, there are etymological affinities linking the words building, dwelling, and thinking. The history of language, in this instance, teaches a profound lesson: that building is never simply a technical exercise, never solely a question of shelter, but also inevitably a forum for dwelling on life; it is nothing less, in many respects, than a form of thinking. Louis Sullivan famously described the architect as “a poet who uses not words but building materials as a medium of expression.”Certainly, when we build we are telling stories about the world, sculpting the cultural landscape even as we remold the physical one. But if buildings tell stories, it is also true that stories make buildings. When offices, stores, and homes are suddenly and unexpectedly annihilated, it is necessary not only to manufacture new material structures but also to repair torn cultural fabrics and damaged psyches. With this in mind, I propose to explore the relationship between the rebuilding of cities with mortar and bricks and the rebuilding of cultural environments with words and images in the aftermath of great urban disasters—a double process neatly caught in the twin meanings of the word reconstruction as “remaking” and as “retelling.” The reconstruction of events in our minds, the stories we hear and tell about disasters, the way we see and imagine destruction—all of these things have a decisive bearing on how we reconstruct damaged buildings, neighborhoods, or cities. Construction, in this sense, is always cultural. We cannot build what we cannot imagine. We create worlds with words. We build stories with stories. Certainly we cannot build with any confidence or ambition without some faith in the future. So when we consider the extraordinary endurance of American cities over the past couple of centuries when confronting fires, floods, earthquakes, and wars, one of our tasks must be to ask how people have perceived and described the disasters that have befallen them. In this chapter, I will examine the role of disaster writings and what I amcalling a “narrative imagination” in helping Americans to conceive of disasters as instruments of progress, and I will argue that this expectation has contributed greatly to this nation’s renowned resilience in the face of natural disasters. Less

“The Predicament of Aftermath” : Oklahoma City and September 11

Edward T. Linenthal

in The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster

Memorial response in the wake of violence is an expression of resilience—whether marking “everyday” acts of murder, or more dramatic outbreaks of terrorism or war. Particularly in an age of mass ... More

Memorial response in the wake of violence is an expression of resilience—whether marking “everyday” acts of murder, or more dramatic outbreaks of terrorism or war. Particularly in an age of mass death, when individuals become statistics signifying the anonymous death of millions, such response is about more than providing a tranquil sacred space for rituals of mourning. It is a protest, a way of saying, “We will not let these dead become faceless and forgotten. This memorial exists to keep their names, faces, stories in our memories.” Increasingly, memorial expression has become an immediate language of engagement, not just a language of commemoration. This is clearly evident in the rise of a new generation of activist memorial environments, in particular the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Oklahoma City National Memorial, consciously modeled after the Holocaust Museum. Both include memorial space, museum exhibition space, archival space, educational space, and outreach programs, promoting activist agendas designed to spark civic energies to combat anti- Semitism, terrorism, and other ills of modernity. Ideally, these institutions are sites of conscience on the civic landscape. Their role is to immerse visitors in a compelling and often horrific story, and transform them into actively engaged citizens. The terrorist attacks in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, and in New York on September 11, 2001, brought communities together and at the same time tore them apart. Whether represented in thousands of letters suggesting appropriate memorial forms, in the creation of so called spontaneous memorials—so popular now that they represent “planned spontaneity” and perhaps even memorial cliché—or in the formation of formal memorial processes, memorial expression helps people to transform bereavement, anger, fear, and resolve into an active communal grief that mournfully celebrates ongoing life, albeit transformed. There is instability in memorial expression, however. The fragility of memory is never more apparent than when memorials are envisioned. Memorial expression tasks creators to ensure remembrance through significant memorial forms, since the danger of forgetfulness, even oblivion, is enduring. There is instability as well in the rhetoric of civic resilience, which bravely proclaims that just as those murdered will be intensely remembered through memorials, the cityscape will be intensely remembered through acts of civic renewal. Less