Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Daniel Libeskind - Architect
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Ever since I began architecture, I had an abhorrence to conventional architecture offices. There was something about the atmosphere of redundancy ,routine and production that made me allergic to all forms of specialization and so-called professionalism. Ten years ago we founded our office in Berlin as a result of a decision, an accident, a rumor on the street and began an unimaginable journey down a path on which we are still travelling.
The PROJECTS have developed in unexpected directions through a practice which does not mimic existing procedures, but attempts to break through into the excitement, adventure and mystery of architecture. By dropping the designations form, function, program and engaging in the public and political realm, which is synonymous with architecture, the dynamics of building take on a new dimension. The celebrations of drawing into building, the pathos of production and the dreamlike routines configure into a substance that is not identifiable on any drawing board. This 'substance' which sometimes appears totally opaque and inscrutable often glimmers with belief and offers CONTACT to a reality of the deepest hope.
The magic of architecture cannot be appropriated by any singular operation because it is always already floating progressing, rising, flying, breathing. Whatever the problems - political, tectonic, linguistic which architecture exposes, one thing I know is that only the intensity and passion of its call make it fun to engage in its practice. My work address a mutlidimensional problematic which - at least in retrospect - seems to have the logic of a certain path. It is this path which is the most engaging construction rather than any particular project found along its way. The exhilarating aspect of such a trajectory, at least for those engaged in it, is that its goals are unknown and its ends indeterminable and uncertain. The path itself substantiates that which is only imagined and forms the evidence of that which is not yet built.
In one book, included in the BIBLIOGRAPHY of my favorite books, by Henri Louis Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion the author comes to the conclusion that the universe, to paraphrase loosely, is a machine for producing gods. It seems to me that architecture is, in fact, the machine that produces the universe which produces the gods. It does so not fully through theories or reflections, but in the ever non-repeatable and optimistic act of construction. The qualities of its resistance, which are as pragmatic as the materials from which it is built, form an irascible and volatile field whose smile is not that of Buddha.
WORDS AND IDEAS seen here demonstrate the fact that every impossible problem is worthy of pursuit. The means of building which are always traditional, reveal the resistance of architecture to manipulation, whether technical or economic, which is the very index of its possibility. This does not mean that architecture is more expensive or more difficult to make, on the contrary, it becomes more fascinating, enigmatic, and certainly more rewarding.
I have found on this very particular path that people, whether here or there or now and then, always expect more of the spaces that they have been given. Tomorrow's citizens will no longer be amenable to receiving in reality what they can simulate in their dreams. We live in an age when economic globalization, the market economy, NEWS media and technological advances make it possible for architecture to consume the immemorial. This site is a document of the unpredictable and an acknowledgement of the uncertain. In this, it reflects the nature of architecture itself. The spirit of architecture wanders where it will.
DANIEL LIBESKIND
Ever since I began architecture, I had an abhorrence to conventional architecture offices. There was something about the atmosphere of redundancy ,routine and production that made me allergic to all forms of specialization and so-called professionalism. Ten years ago we founded our office in Berlin as a result of a decision, an accident, a rumor on the street and began an unimaginable journey down a path on which we are still travelling.
The PROJECTS have developed in unexpected directions through a practice which does not mimic existing procedures, but attempts to break through into the excitement, adventure and mystery of architecture. By dropping the designations form, function, program and engaging in the public and political realm, which is synonymous with architecture, the dynamics of building take on a new dimension. The celebrations of drawing into building, the pathos of production and the dreamlike routines configure into a substance that is not identifiable on any drawing board. This 'substance' which sometimes appears totally opaque and inscrutable often glimmers with belief and offers CONTACT to a reality of the deepest hope.
The magic of architecture cannot be appropriated by any singular operation because it is always already floating progressing, rising, flying, breathing. Whatever the problems - political, tectonic, linguistic which architecture exposes, one thing I know is that only the intensity and passion of its call make it fun to engage in its practice. My work address a mutlidimensional problematic which - at least in retrospect - seems to have the logic of a certain path. It is this path which is the most engaging construction rather than any particular project found along its way. The exhilarating aspect of such a trajectory, at least for those engaged in it, is that its goals are unknown and its ends indeterminable and uncertain. The path itself substantiates that which is only imagined and forms the evidence of that which is not yet built.
In one book, included in the BIBLIOGRAPHY of my favorite books, by Henri Louis Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion the author comes to the conclusion that the universe, to paraphrase loosely, is a machine for producing gods. It seems to me that architecture is, in fact, the machine that produces the universe which produces the gods. It does so not fully through theories or reflections, but in the ever non-repeatable and optimistic act of construction. The qualities of its resistance, which are as pragmatic as the materials from which it is built, form an irascible and volatile field whose smile is not that of Buddha.
WORDS AND IDEAS seen here demonstrate the fact that every impossible problem is worthy of pursuit. The means of building which are always traditional, reveal the resistance of architecture to manipulation, whether technical or economic, which is the very index of its possibility. This does not mean that architecture is more expensive or more difficult to make, on the contrary, it becomes more fascinating, enigmatic, and certainly more rewarding.
I have found on this very particular path that people, whether here or there or now and then, always expect more of the spaces that they have been given. Tomorrow's citizens will no longer be amenable to receiving in reality what they can simulate in their dreams. We live in an age when economic globalization, the market economy, NEWS media and technological advances make it possible for architecture to consume the immemorial. This site is a document of the unpredictable and an acknowledgement of the uncertain. In this, it reflects the nature of architecture itself. The spirit of architecture wanders where it will.
DANIEL LIBESKIND
# posted by "Faces of the Brave" @ 9:52 PM 
