Libeskind's goodbye to Berlin: Daniel Libeskind is moving to New York: a retrospective of his work is on in Berlin - View

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2003 by Brensing Christian

For 13 years Daniel Libeskind lived in Berlin where he built the Jewish Museum which founded his reputation as a hero of international architecture. Since the beginning of this year he has moved to New York to realize what will most certainly be his most significant commission, the masterplanning of Ground Zero and the new World Trade Center. It is therefore appropriate to celebrate Libeskind's departure from the German capital with a retrospective of his work in the space of his own Berlin masterpiece. Matthias Reese, once Libeskind's project director for the Jewish Museum, has designed a generous and elegant 600 sq m exhibition around 15 of the best known works.

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Beginning with Libeskind's graphic work Micromegas (1979) and Chamberworks (1983), half of the projects are dedicated to his early concepts and projects in Germany. Libeskind's first ever completed building, the Felix-Nuss-baum-Museum in Osnabruck (AR April 1999), and his revolutionary designs for two of Berlin's most prominent squares. Potsdamer and Alexander Platz, are included. British projects (the London V&A, AR July 1996, and Manchester's Imperial War Museum, AR January 2003), are also given ample space, all as a kind of prelude to the gigantic American commission in Manhattan. In fact, Counterpoint is the first European showing of the World Trade Center scheme and the Ground Zero masterplan and without doubt they stylistically hark back to Libeskind's symbolic and historical interpretation of Berlin's cityscape. So the transition from the Spree to the Hudson River could be interpreted as a logical transition in Libeskind's architectural evolution.

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Counterpoint is a pragmatic and forthright showing of Libeskind's oeuvre and Matthias Reese does well in limiting the objects on show in the huge whitewashed rooms of the old Prussian court building which now functions as the historical entrance to the Berlin Jewish Museum. The projects appear very generously displayed with only a maximum of two in each room. Models sit on enormous and slanting plinths covered in black sandpaper and grey, diagonally suspended sails highlight the dynamic forces even further. Apart from the models, only a few plans and quotations appear on the walls.

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Throughout the show, video clips are projected directly on the wall planes relaying interviews or statements on Libeskind's work, for example, by Charles Jencks, Cecil Balmond or Michael Blumenthal, director of the Jewish Museum. It was Blumenthal who seized the opportunity to celebrate his museum's second anniversary of its opening with a retrospective of its architectural creator. It is also the first collaboration of the museum with another cultural institution, the London Barbican, where the exhibition will be on show during the autumn of 2004. Libeskind's farewell to Berlin is measured and reassured, giving every reason to believe that he can respond to the challenge of New York.

Counterpoint--The Architecture of Daniel Libeskind, fudisches Museum, Berlin, until 14 December 2003 www.jmberlin.de

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