PATRÍCIA BARNABÉ
Interview

This worldly architect became part of his profession’s elite after designing the mysterious labyrinths of Berlin’s Jewish Museum. Many other projects followed, including famous towers, important institutions and symbols of tolerance, like The World Trade Center master plan. He is currently planning the Tikvá, Jewish Museum Lisbon, which will take up residence in the city’s Belém neighbourhood.

In addition to the rigour and beauty of his deconstructivist style, Daniel Libeskind’s work boasts a strong universalist message, and the desire for it to resonate: “architecture is a kind of timestamp”. His kind includes Berlin’s well-known Jewish Museum, kindred constructions in Copenhagen and San Francisco, Holocaust memorials in the Netherlands, Canada and United States, the Perpetual Light shrine, which honours those killed in the 2016 LGBT community massacre in Orlando, Florida and cancer drop-in Maggie’s Centre in London. Every building is a statement, disconcerting or poetic, that visits the nooks and crannies of the past, encounters and memory for the future: Tikvá, a word invented by displaced and persecuted Jews, means hope.

TIKVA
Jewish Museum Lisbon
Portugal
2023

You were an exceptional musician as a child. Why did you choose architecture?

I was interested in many things: drawing, painting, maths, science. In a way, I opted for architecture because it combined all the interests of my creative youth. It wasn’t a vocation. I wanted to be an artist and study art, painting, drawing. Where I studied architecture, in New York, after a year, students can become artists. I thought it was a great idea. After a year, my mother told me, “You know, you should become an architect, you can always be an artist; as an artist you can never be an architect.” (laughs) A wise woman!

Like art, architecture mirrors the spirit of its time and, as such, it also has the power to shake things up, to be a political weapon and elevate the spirit. Is this what motivates you?

Exactly! Architecture is an art. Not for everybody but for some of us it has always been one of the most important art forms, because it transforms the environment we live in, where we spend our lives. This makes it an extension, not just an extra, but an essential dimension of a civilised and cultured life. It’s a key.

Much of your work makes us think about the place we were born, history... It’s more than just building a house.

I don’t see boundaries between architecture, poetry, maths, the stars, tragedy, science or dance. Boundaries only exist in our minds. Architecture has no boundaries because when it touches our lives it reaches all those dimensions.

You’re working on the project for Tikvá, Jewish Museum Lisbon, which will focus on the Jewish heritage of this part of the world. Can you give us any details?

Tikvá means hope. Hope was invented by the Jews. This idea didn’t exist in the Greco-Roman world, and Jewish life was maintained and continued through hope. Even in Portugal, despite all the tragedies of the past, it survived. It’s a story of resilience and strength that will touch everyone. They will discover something incredible and universal. The site is fantastic. It’s opposite Belém Tower in the gardens, overlooking the place where they set sail during the Discoveries. I see the Jewish Museum Lisbon as a counter-discovery of that discovery of Jewish culture and its contribution in Portugal. We’re also close to other Portuguese museums and institutions, making us part of this great cultural community. How should I describe the museum itself? I see it as fractions, like the Tikvá letters, which, like Hebrew, Latin or Greek, are mystical and very important because they contain much of what defines us. I used the letters in a fractured way, as if they had been broken then put back together. So, we’re literally walking on fragments that come together in a soulful place, inside the museum. Obviously, the place has interesting content. It’s also designed on a human scale, although the building is big, like its wings, the story is told as you walk through it. It has an exhibition area, an educational space, a place for research, a restaurant with a great view of Belém Tower. It will be a lovely spot, attracting people to come together in an endless story.

You always design meeting places, as if you wanted to create a community.

Of course, I think that’s key. Museums are no longer for the elite. They’re really for families, who also come to know more about themselves. So, I’ve designed a museum with successive social areas to explore. Things can intersect, communicate, via the building and its exhibitions. It’s a remarkable story of how art survives and its important contributions to the country’s history. I think it’s going to be interesting for Jews, but even more so for non-Jews. Most don’t know the story, or probably never thought about it. On visiting, they will realise how important it is and how much of their daily life is found in it. The story will be told in many ways, with exhibitions and social interaction within the community.

Global Jewish history tells us much about the human condition. Do you think that those who forget their history may be doomed to make the same mistakes?

Absolutely! People who don’t like history don’t realise that it doesn’t end. It’s happening now. It’s not in the past, it’s on the way to the future, through us and our present. So, what we do in the present is crucial. We should guide our history towards something good and not the failed utopias of the past and the horrible stories we have heard for centuries, or those of Stalin or Hitler. The Jewish sense of history is important, as it’s part of our lives and memories. That’s how I see it. It’s neither another dimension nor a historical footnote. Memories are core and the soil where they take root is memory. That’s how I see architecture.

National Holocaust Monument
Ottawa, Canada

You designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin, others on the same theme, and monuments that underline the error of intolerance, like The World Trade Center master plan. Did you ever feel that, because you were Jewish, that might be your mission?

You know, I think it was my destiny. My parents were Holocaust survivors. I was born in a homeless shelter [in Lodz, Poland]. And when you’re born without a roof over your head, in difficult circumstances, under a totalitarian communist government, we can only feel that this was my destiny. When I began my first project, which later became the Jewish Museum in Berlin, I had never constructed a building before, not even anything small. I started late, but I always felt like an architect. I was drawing, studying and building models, but I wasn’t really an architect. I submitted my proposal for the Jewish Museum project at the same time I opened my studio. I have been so lucky to get such interesting projects, like the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, the Felix Nussbaum Haus in Osnabrück [in Germany, 1998, an extension of the Cultural History Museum, which focusses on the Jewish artist who was born in 1904 and exterminated in Auschwitz. Its temporary exhibitions relate to racism or intolerance] and Ground Zero in New York straight after that. So, it’s a bit of a mystery how it happened. In their own way, these projects became buildings and the story I can tell through them.

You once said that architecture is mystical because even when it’s finished it’s only halfway there. It always awaits its visitors… Because it’s an art to be experienced?

It’s the only way! If you think about it, a photograph is finished when it’s taken, a song is finished when it’s written, a sculpture is finished, a film is finished, but architecture waits. Because it’s a creative environment, it’s new space for occupants to come and fill it with the spirit it represents. Of course, architecture is always diplomatic and symbolic, and it’s mystical because it seems very abstract, straight lines, geometries and all those things. However, a music must connect them. It’s a fantastic thing. It illuminates the individual, the person. The concert is made for them, not for the artist. This facet filled with the spirit of that space is for the architect.

In a way, they’re buildings that welcome and embrace us.

Yes. That’s why we like nice places because we feel we’re part of them, and they were built for us.

Your personal history is long and varied. You are Polish, your wife is Canadian, your children are American, German and Italian. You’ve lived in Poland and Israel, and currently live between Germany and the United States. Your family sounds like it’s from the future.

(laughs) You know, I’ve never believed in country-based identity. We’re only here in this beautiful world momentarily, and we all belong together... Me, my wife and the kids have moved house over 80 times around the world. And it’s curious to discover that, wherever we go, everybody thinks they’re at the centre of the world, whether it’s New York or Lisbon, Tel Aviv or Shanghai. But we can’t all be at the centre of the world, the world itself is the centre. It’s being in the world and being a true citizen of this life.

Do you feel at home in many places?

It’s true. When I walk the streets of a foreign city or I’m on a distant sea, I don’t feel I don’t belong there. It’s purely accidental being born where we’re born. We could have been born anywhere, and that’s the magical part of being human, belonging to a world without the illusion of borders.

What did you feel when you walked around Lisbon?

It’s a very beautiful city, like a Riviera, and it echoes so many lives, so many centuries. We travel thousands of years when we cross its streets and notice the variety and myriad responses of different heroes, we become inspired. We’re able to understand that human culture has more than one dimension. It has various layers and perceiving them means really seeing the world in all its complexity. It’s as complex as the human brain, suffering convulsions and traumas, which is why we can think.

Don’t you think that the more we see the world, and we realise that we can belong to different places and blend in, the more it becomes natural and important to recognise where we come from? Like the history of the Jewish people, who have a strong identity wherever they may be.

Absolutely! But it was a way of not confusing languages, which are like good borders. When we cross them, we realise that we’re all in the same material and spiritual world. And I agree with you, if we never travel, we lose a connection. We are also other things, another person. We will never understand this if we always live in the same place, under the illusion of safety. We must look after immigrants, emigrants and refugees because that’s all of us. We all come from somewhere, some of us have crossed deserts to be where we are.

My mother always taught me that freedom was the greatest human achievement.

Your mother is very wise, and I agree with her. Being free is a great thing, which is why I agree with the words of a great English writer: “We have freedom, we have no choice” (laughs). It’s a Yiddish song that encapsulates the idea of freedom.

What are the differences between designing a museum and a house?

Both are spaces where the key to discovering them is understanding what their dreams are, where their gaze is trained, what’s invisible, feeling the space. What’s the inaudible voice we hear when we put our ear to the ground? And it’s very different. A house is for a person or a family. The challenges are different, but both must be rooted in a truth, something authentic, something that is not just a simulation, we look for our roots. Planning large apartment buildings, which is what I recently did for social housing in New York, in Brooklyn, is tricky because we have a low budget, and you must create something that is individual, beautiful and sustainable.

Do you still stare at a blank page, or do you go with your intuition?

Never. We must wait for a moment of inspiration. We can’t force it, otherwise it’s futile. We must go to the place and get in touch with place’s emotions, the idea of the place, and the type of mind leading this project. Then we must be struck by an unexpected lightning bolt that opens a door to something that is not part of a cliché and the ordinary things that we all naturally live with. And when we get that light, that truth is the sketch we make. We don’t think about it too much. The mind has its own narrative, and we always learn from what we draw because it’s true and it connects our eye, mind and the place.

You once said that before planning a building somewhere you try to hear what can’t be heard and see what cannot be seen. How do you do that?

That’s the secret. In my first project, the Jewish Museum, the hundreds of participants from all over the world came with their cameras. I didn’t. I took a pencil and a piece of paper. I think it’s important not to take equipment, not to record. Just lie down and put your ear to the ground, literally, and listen to the place’s heartbeat, and we’ll discover something unavailable any other way.

Having been a musician, you have greater sensibility for the acoustics of places…

Yes, it’s true, because it’s musical and most of the time we don’t hear it. But every city has a sound, a smell, a face. It’s like a person, with a body and soul. It’s like I look at it and we must see not only a body but a soul and open it up. That’s the wonder of architecture.

Do you still play accordion?

Not anymore. The other day my sister sent me an old letter, which I had received when I first arrived in New York, offering me amazing things, like a position of virtuoso. I then realised that I was playing at a high level. I played with great classical Ashkenazi musicians. Accordion was a very bizarre instrument. It was never considered a regular instrument, more something for gypsies or the streets, but I only played classical music. Music is still part of my life; I didn’t give up on it. I just changed instruments. I don’t see much difference to be honest.

I thought you might play for your own amusement.

Well, when you’re a virtuoso, you can’t do it as a hobby (laughs). It’s impossible. The great musicians always say: If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the audience knows it. We must dedicate ourselves to music 24 hours a day.

I know you have a large library, and you love books…

Probably too much…

How do they inspire you? Do you think the internet will replace them?

I don’t like reading on tablets and screens. I like the physical book, the smell of the paper, the binding. Saying that, the internet is a great tool for books. We can know more about books and find very obscure ones. They inspire because they’ve been around for thousands of years, and it’s those books I read. I read the bestsellers that have lasted for 2,000 years. (laughs)

What are you reading now?

Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro. Shakespeare’s plays in America mirror its divisions. It’s a very recent book. I’m also reading things from the 18th century and other old books, like The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Lamentations, and books from other cultures. It’s a question of serendipity. Stumbling upon an issue that may be important to our lives. Books are a key to the world. If we have access to books, we can find things that seem to have been written for us, and no one else.

A kind of magic that transports us to people, places, to ideas that we identify with...

Exactly! Life isn’t only the biology we know about, it’s a real mystery. Why are we born? Where are we going? Why did we come? Those are the questions everybody starts with, in all the world’s religions. Even if they take a different route later, we always ask ourselves: why is this happening to me? What should we do?

Did you really plan your life or go with the flow?

I don’t believe in the premeditated, which is ironic, as I’m an architect. I don’t believe we need an objective and that our life is about trying to achieve it. That’s not true. What’s important is having a real path that gives us stability and integrity. We might fall by the wayside, but we follow that path. The rest is an adventure I’ve experienced with my wife and children. We never plan anything. It’s like a game. And we can’t forget that we’re not the only ones who decide, the world decides too. It’s our other partner. We need be sensitive to it and to the decisions related to us.

What still challenges you at work and in life?

(silence) That’s a great question. I think it’s the miracle of life. We should never forget how incredible it is. The magic of life is fundamental. Then comes love, family and friends, emotions, beauty, poetry, good, truth – and all these things stem from that miracle.

The power of doing things together?

Yes, and the power of science. Did you see how quickly they created the vaccines? It used to take decades. It has moved great minds, shown us the power of the human intellect. It has rebalanced our position with the world, shown us what we need and what we can do to resolve it.

Because we’re all in the same boat.

Yes. It’s a Jewish desire, from the very beginning. So, we must nurture and hone our critical faculties. We must care about the important things. We can never forget them.

And, once again, hope.

Absolutely! We go back to Tikvá, because hope touches all kinds of absence and emptiness, overcoming them. It makes us realise that there is something greater than ourselves and the things we think.

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