one of the most influ­en­tial archi­tects of our time

AN INTEL­LEC­TU­AL DREAM­ER BECOMES
AN INTER­NA­TION­AL ARCHITECT

Pre­vi­ously, Libe­s­kind prac­ticed his pas­sion in a very the­or­et­ic­al way. He taught and gave lec­tures at numer­ous uni­ver­sit­ies around the world. Cus­tom­ar­ily, archi­tects fol­low the path of passing on all their col­lec­ted know­ledge at the end of their pro­fes­sion­al careers, but Libe­s­kind has always broken with con­ven­tions. Born in Poland as the son of two Holo­caust sur­viv­ors, he arrived New York City when he was thir­teen. Here he intern­al­ized the city’s any­one-can-make it-atti­tude and didn’t let him­self be dis­suaded by skeptics.

In doing so, Libe­s­kind was very much aware of the fact that a pro­ject that has won does not neces­sar­ily mean the idea will be real­ized. But he refuses to give up. The best example is his mas­ter­piece; the Jew­ish Museum in Ber­lin that no one believed would ever be built. But Libe­s­kind moved with his whole fam­ily to Ber­lin and made sure the pro­ject was real­ized. It took him 10 years to do it, but in the end his patience brought him inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion and fame. In the first year after the open­ing of the museum, it had received half a mil­lion vis­it­ors, although it was com­pletely empty. A bet­ter proof for the suc­cess of an archi­tect can hardly be found.