Architect, Daniel Libeskind was 42 years old before getting his first architectural commission, and 52 when he completed his first building, the Felix Nussbaum Haus in Osnabruck in 1998. He has since become one of the master builders of our age, an architectural alchemist who fuses simple, commemorative concepts with soaringly original abstract ideas – such as the interlocking prisms used to extend the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
Renowned for his ability to evoke cultural memory in buildings – the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the master plan for Ground Zero in New York – he takes his inspiration from Gothic cathedrals, Baroque buildings, Piranesi, Stonehenge… and he believes in the past as a key to the meanings of the present. ‘You can’t build anything meaningful if you don’t understand the context of a place’ – even if that context is often hidden or obliterated.
His most acclaimed public buildings achieve presence not by complementing what they contain, but by engaging our attention on behalf of what is inside. As his peer Frank Gehry has said: ‘Libeskind expresses an emotion with a building, and that is the most difficult thing to do.’ More importantly, he communicates it. When you create a building you are telling a story, and Daniel Libeskind is one of the great storytellers of our age. Come and listen on May 22nd
In Partnership with Jewish Book Week.
Daniel Libeskind, B.Arch. M.A. BDA FAIA
An international figure in architecture and urban design, the architect Daniel Libeskind is renowned for his ability to evoke cultural memory in buildings of equilibrium-defying contemporaneity. Informed by a deep commitment to music, philosophy, and literature, Mr. Libeskind aims to create architecture that is resonant, original, and sustainable. Born in Lód’z, Poland, in 1946, Mr. Libeskind immigrated to the United States as a teenager.
Daniel Libeskind established his architectural studio in Berlin, Germany, in 1989 after winning the competition to build the Jewish Museum in Berlin. In February 2003, Studio Libeskind moved its headquarters from Berlin to New York City when Daniel Libeskind was selected as the master planner for the World Trade Center redevelopment. Daniel Libeskind’s practice is involved in designing and realizing a diverse array of urban, cultural and commercial projects internationally.
Will Gompertz
Will Gompertz is the BBC's first Arts Editor, a senior journalistic role he took up in 2009. He has presented numerous programmes and documentaries for the BBC, hosts his own regular network radio show, and written for leading magazines and newspapers, such as: Vanity Fair, The Times, and The Guardian.
He has also written two best-selling non-fiction books (both published by Penguin in the UK). What Are You Looking At? – a history of modern art – which was published to excellent reviews in 2012, and Think Like an Artist (2015), about creativity.
Before joining the BBC Will spent 7-years as a Director of the Tate Galleries where he was responsible for its BAFTA-winning website, creative direction, and the launching of the UK's first Performance Art festival.
Will was voted one of the World's Top 50 Creative Thinkers by New York's Creativity magazine and is a Fellow of Harris Manchester, Oxford University.
