Exhibition "Daniel Libeskind: Architecture is a Language"

Daniel Libeskind is one of the greatest figures in contemporary world architecture and urbanism. He is renowned for re-evaluating traditional approaches to architecture and its perception in all its complexity. The diverse spectrum of his projects includes significant cultural and commercial institutions – including museums and concert halls – as well as conference centers, universities, residential complexes, hotels, shopping malls, and even designs for individual construction projects. He also designs sets for opera performances and leads a studio for the design of utilitarian objects.

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Daniel Libeskind, B.Arch. M.A. BDA AIA, was born in 1946 in post-war Poland and has been a U.S. citizen since 1965. He studied music in Israel (thanks to a scholarship from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation) and in New York, becoming a virtuoso accordion player. However, he eventually left music behind and began studying architecture at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, which he graduated from in 1970. Two years later, he successfully completed a postgraduate study of the history and theory of architecture at the Faculty of Comparative Literature at Essex University in England.

In 1989, Daniel Libeskind won the competition for the design of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which was officially opened in September 2001 and received wide public acclaim. Even before that, in July 1998, the Felix Nussbaum House in Osnabrück was completed. In July 2002, the Imperial War Museum North opened in Manchester. Following were additional project realizations: Atelier Weil, a private studio with a gallery, Mallorca, September 2003; Graduate Student Centre at London Metropolitan University, March 2004; Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, June 2004; Tangent, an office skyscraper for Hyundai Development Corporation, Seoul, Korea, February 2005; Memoria e Luce, a memorial to the victims of September 11 in Padua, Italy, September 11, 2005; Wohl Centre, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv, Israel, October 2005. Among his later realizations stand out: Frederic C. Hamilton Building, an extension of the Museum of Art, along with the Denver Museum Residences housing complex in Denver, Colorado, October 2006; the expansion of the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, June 2007; and the glass courtyard, an extension of the Jewish Museum in Berlin: a new glass roof covering the historic courtyard was completed in the autumn of 2007. The Ascent at Roebling’s Bridge, a skyward-arching residential tower in Covington, Kentucky, March 2008; the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, California was opened in June 2008; in October of the same year, Westside, the largest shopping and wellness center in Europe, opened in Bern, Switzerland.

Currently, several of Daniel Libeskind’s projects are in the implementation phase, such as the Military History Museum in Dresden; the Grand Canal Performing Arts Centre and Galleria in Dublin, Ireland; CityCenter, an urban complex on the Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada; Zlota 44, a residential tower in Warsaw, and a concert grand piano is also being produced for the Schimmel company according to the architect's design. After winning the competition for the World Trade Center project in February 2003, Daniel Libeskind was appointed the chief architect for the redevelopment of the site in New York City. The Memory Foundations complex is now under construction.

Daniel Libeskind has many other projects underway, such as the New Center for Arts and Culture in Boston, Massachusetts; the L Tower and Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, Canada; the renovation of the historic Fiera Milano exhibition center in Milan, Italy; Songdo City in Incheon, South Korea; Haeundae Udong Hyundai l’Park in Busan, South Korea; a waterfront residential complex at Keppel Bay in Singapore; Rejuvenation, a children's center in Gulfport, Mississippi, devastated by Hurricane Katrina; the Editoriale Bresciana Tower in Brescia; and the so-called Orestad Downtown Master Site Plan, a conceptual development solution for a five-kilometer zone in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Daniel Libeskind has taught and lectured at many universities around the world. He has held prestigious professorships, such as the Frank O. Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto, Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany, the Cret Chair at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Louis Kahn Chair at Yale University. He has received many awards, including the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2001 – this prize, awarded to artists whose work promotes understanding and peace among nations, had never before been awarded to an architect. He is also a recipient of the Deutsche Architekturpreis for 1999 for the Jewish Museum project in Berlin and the Goethe Medallion (2000) for contributions to culture; in 1996 he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Architecture and the Berlin Cultural Prize the same year; in 1990 he was awarded membership in the European Academy of Arts and Letters; in 1997 he received an honorary doctorate from Humboldt University in Berlin; followed by further honorary doctorates: College of Arts and Humanities (1999), Essex University, England; University of Edinburgh (2002) and the same year DePaul University, Chicago, and the most recent one granted by the University of Toronto (2004). Two of Daniel Libeskind's buildings received the RIBA award in 2004: the London Metropolitan University Graduate Centre and the Imperial War Museum North; the Royal Museum was also nominated for the Stirling Prize. In the same year, the U.S. Department of State designated Daniel Libeskind as the first cultural ambassador for architecture as part of the CultureConnect program.

Daniel Libeskind's work has been exhibited in many major museums and galleries around the world and has also been published in book form in many world languages.