Daniel Libeskind Quotes (34 Quotes)


    I don't get to sleep when I'm in New York. Really. I'm living on adrenaline.

    It's about how to bring together the seemingly contradictory aspects of the memorial, which is about a tragedy and how it changed the world, but also about creating a vital and beautiful city of the 21st century.

    Well, I think one doesn't really have to invent this memorial space, because it is already there. And it is speaking with a voice and, you know, 4 million of us came to see the site.

    I think there is a new awareness in this 21st century that design is as important to where and how we live as it is for museums, concert halls and civic buildings.

    To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it.


    And it is very moving because one has to see the site not as just another site of development but it is a very special site. It is a site that souls and hearts of all Americans.

    Life it is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics, it's about experience, it's about participation, it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious.

    The Spiral Gallery may happen, too. It is not dependent on government funding.

    I never forgot that skyline and what it means to an immigrant, an American. It's not just a symbol. It's not just something up in the air. It's about the values that we all share,

    We all came to see that site. We all walked around it. It is already sacred.

    Winning a competition in architecture is a ticket to oblivion. It's just an idea. Ninety-nine per cent never get built.

    But the US is a democracy, and when a government is voted out, these humanist notions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness continue.

    Larry wanted us to reposition the tower. We wouldn't, and won't. He's been holding back our fees. We want to get paid. And that's it. It'll get solved and we'll carry on with planning Ground Zero.

    Absolutely, that's my commitment, and that's the commitment of New York,

    It's been hard to hand over the working design of Freedom Tower to another architect - although we're still a part of the team, and so is Larry.


    I think it's the greatest form of art, to create a residential building, ... We often judge cities by great public buildings. But we admire great cities because people live there in a beautiful way. You have to think about how each person will live there you can't just think about abstract ideas.

    Well, I didn't want to have the reminder sort of in the sky, so that people would forever look at it. I wanted to have - really to create a city from the bottom up. From that foundation, which held, from the democratic power of what the site really is.

    When you're a kid with artistic yearnings brought up in the Bronx, you don't get fed up too easily.

    There will be a competition for the memorial. And then it can be developed with trees, with planting. It can become a very beautiful place protected from the streets, because it is below. And it can be something very moving and very private.


    I studied architecture in New York. So, really I was very moved, like everyone else, to try to contribute something that has that resonance and profundity of it means to all of us.

    And then, build a bustling wonderful city of the 21st century, with a restoration of a spectacular skyline, which Manhattan, of course, needs. So, that is really the design as a whole.

    There are more people living in Lower Manhattan now than before the terrorist attacks. That's faith for you. There's such a strong spirit here.

    Only through acknowledgment of the erasure and void of Jewish life can the history of Berlin and Europe have a human future.

    And you have to remember that I came to America as an immigrant. You know, on a ship, through the Statue of Liberty. And I saw that skyline, not just as a representation of steel and concrete and glass, but as really the substance of the American Dream.

    The public has to understand, it's not just build some buildings,


    And of course I like Berlin a lot. It's such an interesting city.


    The foreign press seems obsessed with the Freedom Tower, as if it was the only thing going on here. In fact, we're trying to keep a huge juggling act in balance, with the tower as just one of the many balls in play.

    I'm not Candide, nor Dr Pangloss, but we know that faith moves mountains.


    It's a project that touched me as an immigrant and as a New Yorker.


    More Daniel Libeskind Quotations (Based on Topics)


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