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Daniel Libeskind has completed an education centre at the Jewish Museum Berlin, twelve years after the American architect completed his widely acclaimed extension (+ slideshow).

Located across the street within the structure of Berlin’s old flower market, the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin provides a new home to the museum’s library and archive, which has doubled in size over the last decade to accommodate both printed and digital records.

At the entrance, Libeskind has designed a roughly-hewn timber box that bursts through the exterior wall, with angular skylights and a sliced opening to invite visitors inside. Two additional timber boxes are located within the building and house the library and auditorium.

The 2300-square-metre centre will be used as a venue for educational workshops, lectures and conferences, and will also offer a meeting place for the 7000 guided tours run by the museum each year.

The Jewish Museum Berlin is one of the largest museums of Jewish history in Europe and opened to the public in 2001, following the construction of Libeskind’s extension to the original 1930s building.

“My ongoing collaboration with the Jewish Museum Berlin is a source of tremendous professional and personal pride,” said Daniel Libeskind. “Each project offers a fresh chance to illuminate Jewish history and culture, to understand the tragedies and the triumphs, and to celebrate the resilience, creativity and erudition that have been Jews’ enduring legacy.”

This year Libeskind was also selected to design a peace centre on the site of a former prison in Northern Ireland and completed a family of curved towers in Singapore.

See more stories about Daniel Libeskind »

Photography is by Bitter Bredt.

Here’s some more information from Studio Daniel Libeskind:

The Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin Will Be Forum for Research, Discussion and Education

Roughly a dozen years after Daniel Libeskind’s extension to the Jewish Museum Berlin opened to great acclaim in 2001, the museum has unveiled its latest collaboration with the architect, the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin.

The 25,000-square-foot, one-storey Academy stands on the site of Berlin’s one-time flower market, whose shell undergirds the new structure. Located across from the museum proper, the Academy brings together its library, archives and education center and offers additional office, storage and support space for the museum.

Since the museum’s reopening in 2001, its public and educational programs have more than doubled. In addition to 7,000 guided tours each year, the museum offers more than 400 educational programs ranging from workshops for children to training courses for museum professionals. The new facility will house these programs as well as symposia, conferences, lectures and seminars.

The museum’s library and archives have also moved to the Academy. The archives, which contain both printed and audio-visual materials, have also doubled in size over the last decade while the library’s holdings have tripled.

In-Between Spaces

Daniel Libeskind’s design for the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin links the building to the museum’s other structures and open spaces, both thematically and structurally.

One of the first things visitors see upon entering the piazza leading to the building are the words of the great medieval Jewish scholar and philosopher Moses Maimonides. His famous adjuration, “Hear the truth, whoever speaks it,” is splashed across the left side of the façade, a reminder that those who delve into history must be prepared to accept what they find regardless of the source. The five languages in which the charge is given – English, German, Hebrew, Arabic and the original Judeo-Arabic of medieval Spain – reinforce that message while also suggesting the universal nature of truth.

On the right, a large downward-sloping cube bursts through the façade. Its unusual contours echo the jagged shape of the museum’s 2001 extension, designed by Mr. Libeskind and visible across the street. That shape is also a variation on a theme found in the museum’s Garden of Exileand Glass Courtyard, also designed by Mr. Libeskind and opened 2007 and 2005, respectively.

Two large skylights, visible from the piazza, rest atop the cube. Shaped like the Hebrew letters Alef and Bet (A and B), they are another reminder of the importance of learning and knowledge to the human experience and of their centrality to Jewish life.

After passing through a large gash in the cube that serves as the Academy’s entryway, visitors are decanted into transitional space comprising two more huge cubes. Thrust forward at odd angles, the cubes, which house the library and the auditorium, form a jagged triumvirate with the rear end of entrance cube.

The movement and interaction suggested by the cubes’ shape and placement and by the seemingly rough-hewn timber (actually radiate pine timber) used to fabricate them suggests the sort of crates used to transport precious objects, including books. They also suggest Noah’s Ark, which preserved the most precious thing of all – living beings, in all their splendid variety – during the most important voyage in biblical history.

“In-Between Spaces,” Mr. Libeskind’s name for his design, describes the transitional area among the three cubes. It also alludes to the different perspectives offered by that unique vantage point. Standing on that spot, looking into the hall and out on to museum’s other structures and spaces, visitors are ideally placed to reflect on the museum’s larger purpose and their own experience of it.

The post The Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin
by Daniel Libeskind appeared first on Dezeen.

German artist Hendrik Beikirch has painted a 70-metre-high mural of a fisherman a few blocks away from Daniel Libeskind’s Haeundae I’Park skyscrapers in Busan, South Korea (+ slideshow).

Beikirch’s elderly fisherman represents the large number of South Koreans still working in traditional industries who have not felt the benefits of the country’s rapid economic development, signified by the glass and steel skyscrapers in the background.

Beikirch painted the mural on the side of Busan’s fishing union building located between Haeundae and Gwangalli beaches. Underneath is a statement in Korean which translates as: “Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.”

The project was led by Public Delivery, a Seoul-based organisation that promotes contemporary art across Asia and Europe, who explain that Beikirch ”deliberately distances himself from the polished and artificial aesthetic of advertising” usually found in public spaces.

For more outdoor art, have a look at Dezeen’s map of Hackney locating stencil work by street artist Banksy.

See all our stories about art »
See all our stories about Daniel Libeskind »

Here’s some more information from Public Delivery:

During the last week of August 2012, German painter Hendrik Beikirch created not only a stunning work but an iconic piece that stretches over 70 metres (230 ft.) high and is yet to be considered as Asia’s tallest mural. Located in South Korea‘s second largest city, Busan, this piece showcases a monochromatic mural of a fisherman, set in contrast with the Haeundae I’Park building at the background, constructed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind.

The Haeundae I’Park is a residential building and is also a symbol for the rapid development and accumulated wealth in Korea, a poor country not too long ago. The mural that depicts an image of a fisherman represents a significant portion of Korea‘s population that has not been affected by the economic growth and until now, lives under very different circumstances compared to their affluent neighbors.

Responsible for this project is Public Delivery, a organisation who has made waves across Asia and Europe through the promotion of contemporary art. The artwork will be on display for an indefinite period of time.

The painting

The mural presents a local fisherman in his 60s, staring into an intangible space with his face marked with wrinkles, still wearing long plastic gloves – a sign that there are still men and women like him at this age working for a living. This dying profession entails six to seven days of work in a week, under difficult circumstances, while just receiving a minimum amount of financial support, just enough to buy certain needs.

However, despite the story behind the portrait, the painting conveys a positive message seen in the emotion shown by the fisherman. In addition, underneath it, Beikirch added a statement in Korean letters which roughly translate to “Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.”

Beikirch is known for his artworks set in monochromatic and detailed painting and this is no difference. Unlike other artists, he painted this mural without using a projector or a sketch on the wall. This, in its true form, is a masterful performance and a task that requires enormous routine and outstanding precision.

The location

The painting is applied on the building of Busan‘s fishing union. It is located between Korea’s two most famous beaches, Haeundae (해운대해수욕장) and Gwangalli (광안리해수욕장), clearly visible from the latter. Over the past years, both beaches turned into excessive commercial areas and became heavy motors for the city‘s tourism, attracting mostly Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Russian travelers.

The building is also home to a fish market that provides the prosperous inhabitants of Busan, like those living in the Hyundai I’Park building, with Korean style raw fish (hoe, 회), a pricey delicacy that is similar to Japanese sashimi.

The artist

Hendrik Beikirch (b. 1974) is a German painter well known for his series of large monochromatic wall paintings that often show portraits of older people, visibly marked by life. In order to create these works, Beikirch secretly takes sketches of strangers whom he encounters on his travels, noticing them for their aura and expression between hope and struggle. This inspired the title of his on-going series “Faces of Hope and Struggle” and runs seamlessly on the canvases of Beikirch, which mostly displays the same frontal view of unfamiliar people. He deliberately distances himself from the polished and artificial aesthetic of advertising, which has now occupied major parts in public space.

Beikirch always works with a reduced color palette, and therefore the high recognition factor ensures that viewers now can easily find walls by him all over Europe, Canada, the USA, Mexico, Chile, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Russia and other countries, all painted in the last 15 years.

Partners

This project would not have been possible without the support of The Busan Cultural Foundation, The Arts Council Korea, Busan Metropolitan City, Indie Culture Network AGIT and Suyeong Local Government. MBC, the oldest and one of the major commercial Korean broadcasting companies, is the main media partner.

The post Asia’s Tallest Mural
by Hendrik Beikirch appeared first on Dezeen.

Skyscrapers in Seoul: this skyscraper with a pointy midriff is the second of two stories about buildings designed for the Yongsan International Business District in Seoul, South Korea, by architect Daniel Libeskind.

Harmony Tower will be located in the north-eastern corner of the new commercial district next to another skyscraper designed by architect Dominique Perrault and will contain offices on 38 of its 46 floors.

Sheltered gardens will line the southern and eastern facades, offering views out towards the nearby Han river.

The base of the building will also taper inwards to create a larger area of landscaping around the entrance.

See more stories about the Yongsan International Business District, including a slideshow of all the projects commissioned by developer DreamHub.

Here’s some more information from Studio Daniel Libeskind:

Harmony Tower

Harmony Tower, a project that is part of the new Yongsan International Business district (YIBD)development in Seoul, is an iconic, 21st century sustainable office tower that is 46 floors.

The design for the tower is inspired by YunDeung, traditional Korean paper lanterns. The concept is to create a tower as a faceted lantern, whose multiple planes reflect the sky and the earth and capture the light on its differing angles, creating a glowing gateway and beacon in the YIBD site.

The sculpted tower is subtly shaped by the urban context. The tower tapers at its base to create a feeling of space and openness for the pedestrian plaza. The form then reaches out in the middle of the tower to maximize the floor plates and Han River views and to create a sense of scale marking the gateway from the western entrance to the site. The tower then tapers back and up to its top to allow the most light and air onto the other towers around, creating a strong ascending peak to the tower. The tower form creates multiple perspectives, like a sculpture in the round, with an ever changing public profile responding specifically to the site.

The tower contains unique vertical winter gardens on the south and west facades, providing users access to natural ventilation and planted park settings at each of the 38 office floors. The gardens not only act as a special amenity to all the tenants, but also a buffer to the direct sunlight hitting the glass building. The gardens function as open, park space within the building, but also help to reduce the heat gain and allow the building to function more sustainably. Harmony Tower is a state of the art workplace, interweaving themes of nature, sustainability, and efficiency in a faceted, sculptural form.

Location: Seoul, South Korea
Building size: 100,000 sq.m
Structure: Concrete central core and floor slabs with steel columns and mega bracing
Client: Dream Hub, AMC – Yongsan Development Co., Ltd.

Structural engineer: ARUP
Mechanical / Electrical / Plumbing engineer: ARUP
Landscape architect: Martha Schwartz Partners
Lighting designer: Focus Lighting
Status: In design

Architect Daniel Libeskind has completed a family of curved towers beside a bay in Singapore.

Alternating between 24 and 41 storeys-high, the six glazed residential towers feature rooftop gardens and are connected to one another by elevated bridges.

The Reflections at Keppel Bay development also includes a series of aluminium-clad apartment blocks that accompany the high-rise buildings to create over a thousand new residences in total.

You can see more projects by Daniel Libeskind here, including a war museum that sparked a fiery debate amongst our readers.

Photography is © Courtesy of Keppel Bay Pte Ltd – a Keppel Land Company.

Here’s a longer description from Studio Daniel Libeskind:

Keppel Harbor, Reflections at Keppel Bay

Prominently situated at the entrance to Sin­gapore’s historic Keppel Harbor, Reflections at Keppel Bay is a two-million-square-foot residential development comprised of 6 high-rise towers ranging from 24 and 41 stories and 11 low-rise villa apart­ment blocks of 6–8 floors– a total of 1,129 units.

The series of high-rise undulating towers is the focal point of this project. These sleek curving forms of alternating heights create graceful openings and gaps between the structures allowing all to have commanding views of the waterfront, Sentosa, the golf course and Mount Faber.

The Libeskind design for Reflections at Keppel Bay skillfully tackles the challenge faced by architects working in contexts such as Singapore: the high-density construction needed to recoup the exorbitant cost of real estate. To address this issue, rather than equally distributing the density across the site with similar building types, the design is composed of two distinct typologies of housing; the lower Villa blocks along the water front and the high-rise towers which over look them set just behind.

The artful composition of ever shifting building orientations, along with the differing building typologies, creates an airy, light-filled grouping of short and tall structures. These ever shifting forms create an experience where each level feels unique as it is not in alignment with either the floor above or below.

No two alike residences are experienced next to one another or seen from the same perspective; the result of this design is a fundamental shift in living in a high-rise where individuality and difference is not sacrificed.

A recipient of the BCA Green Mark Gold Award  from Singapore’s building and construction authority, the form, construction and materials of the buildings are unprecedented for Singapore and particularly for a residential development.

The double curvatures of the high-rise towers are unique in the world for structure and construction; they are clad with a fully unitized and insulated curtain wall which is among the first for residential developments in the region.

The low-rise villas along the water front are clad in anodized aluminum that creates a luminous surface and provides additional insulation. The six towers are crowned with lush sky gardens on sloping rooflines and linked by sky bridges, providing pockets of open spaces and platforms and unobstructed 360-degree views, the kind of green, open space, rarely found in high-rise buildings.

Daniel Libeskind’s first residential project in Asia, and his largest completed residential project to date, Reflections is a creative in­terplay of changing planes and reflections.  It defies the inherent nature of high-density residential developments with its innovative approach to design– creating a new land mark for the greater Singapore.

Dezeen Wire: architecture critics have been offering their thoughts on Daniel Libeskind’s divisive Military History Museum in Dresden, which opened earlier this month.

The Observer‘s architecture critic Rowan Moore praised the spaces where the old museum meets the new addition but admonished the shard-like extension for its lack of functional space, stating: “The design’s weakness is its belief that sheer shape can speak on its own.”

In a review for The Wall Street Journal, Mary M. Lane described Libeskind’s intervention as “a piece of shrapnel freshly fallen from the sky” and outlines the architect’s motivations for working on the project, as a child of Holocaust survivors.

Writing in German publication Deutsche Welle, Ronny Arnold said that Libeskind’s renovation marks a new beginning and claims that “the museum is moving away from the mere presentation of war equipment and toward multidimensionality,” while Erin Huggins of The Local obtained a positive response to the building from museum spokesman Major Lars Berg, who said: “It’s an interesting combination of conventional components and something very progressive that one wouldn’t expect from the military.”

Libeskind’s design has had our readers up in arms – see the article and comments here and see all of our previous stories on Daniel Libeskind here.

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