Daniel Libeskind

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Presenter0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:23

My castaway this week is an architect. He might have been a musician or a mathematician or a philosopher, but architecture has become the chosen form through which he expresses the ideas contained in all these different disciplines. He was born in Poland into a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust.

Presenter0:40

and after an academic career won an architectural commission to design a building that evoked that heritage, the Jewish Museum in Berlin. This jagged, inspirational building put him in the front rank of modern architects, helping him to win commissions in this country for the Imperial War Museum in Salford and the extension to the V and A.

Presenter1:00

Then in March this year he won the competition to design the scheme that will replace the Twin Towers in New York, the Phoenix that will rise from ground zero. Architecture, he says, is the one profession in which you can't be a pessimist. He is Daniel Liebeskind. What do you mean by that, Daniel? Um by inference that means that you're an optimist, huh?

Daniel Libeskind1:21

You have to be if you're going to be an architect, because architecture is always dealing with con something constructive. It's about construction. It's about making life better. It's about the future. If you didn't believe in the future, you couldn't build. You would just uh withdraw, you could write, you could sing, but you could not build. It's too permanent, too physical. It's permanent, physical, and and i well, the very word construction means that one is endeavoring to make something that will

Daniel Libeskind1:45

Create foundations for the future.

Presenter1:47

On the other hand, people might look at your Jewish Museum in Berlin and say, what an incredibly sad building. You know, it's zinc and concrete, it has staircases that lead to blank walls, it's unheated, light just manages to peep through somewhere, but not always. There's a great void in the middle of it. It's the kind of building that's made people cry and does make people cry.

Daniel Libeskind2:08

Well, it has to be both. Architecture has to have the full range of emotions, particularly when it refers to issues of history. Jewish history in Berlin is not an easy history. Therefore, the building really has those dimensions as well. But it also has that light. And light brings something from the outside, something which is not of the building, something that is of the future and brings hope to that whole history. Otherwise, there would be no use speaking about the past, because it would be disconnected from what we do today.

Presenter2:36

So the optimism is in the attempt to create some kind of reconciliation, is it, with Germans and Jews and the past?

Daniel Libeskind2:44

not so much reconciliation, but an understanding of that history, an understanding that the time moves on, that we cannot just be nostalgic and be stuck in some past, but that we have to take responsibility in an ethical, in an architectural way, for what that time passage means.

Presenter2:57

But there is a form of optimism there, isn't there? In the Garden of Exile, as you call it, there are these forty nine great vertical columns set at a strange angle as if you're on board a ship, and I think that that's a symbol for you, isn't it?

Daniel Libeskind3:10

Those pillars are what I remembered from arriving by ship to New York. It is about the verticality and and that that amazing feeling that that you've left everything behind that you have known, your language, everything, and you're new and yet everything has changed but has has remained the same because you are still with your hopes and dreams there.

Presenter3:30

Um

Presenter3:31

And you were thirteen years old, on board a ship, sailing in. There was that Manhattan skyline, which is something you talked about a lot when you won the Ground Zero project competition, wasn't it?

Daniel Libeskind3:40

I was reminded when I wasn't reminded, it was palpable to me because what happened in Lawa Manhattan, the devastation of the World Trade Center, reminded me of what Manhattan really meant to me when I came there. And I came like millions of immigrants on a boat, four o'clock in the morning, seeing the Statue of Liberty. And it was just amazing. Out of the mist came that skyline, and that skyline is unfathomable. Actually, you know, even if you've seen films as I have and read books about New York, I've seen the images, there's nothing that prepares you for what it will mean to you. And as an immigrant, it means everything. It doesn't just mean that huge amount of steel and glass and concrete, but it means all the hopes that you have. It means a new place, a land of opportunity, a place where you can think freely. It was something amazing.

Presenter4:22

And will your new building and you will build when it's built the tallest tower in the world, as it turns out, because it's going to be one thousand seven hundred and seventy six feet high, which is the seventeen seventy six date of American independence, will that show up as people sail in above the Statue of Liberty?

Daniel Libeskind4:35

Absolutely. I actually created that compass, and I have to tell you the truth, from that vantage point, from that vantage point of a ship. Although most people now arrive by airplanes to Canada or to New York airport, I thought that that eternal almost perspective of the gateway of America in New York with the Statue of Liberty is where those buildings should really form that spiraling movement. And they spiral up to that great tower, the Freedom Tower, the 776 Tower. And all of those buildings, high-rise buildings, really answer the call of the Statue of Liberty, which is a kind of spiral structure in itself with its flame, with its inspiring movement towards the land.

Presenter5:09

So you went out there in a boat, did you? And sat there and looked at it and thought, That's what I want to do.

Daniel Libeskind5:12

I didn't have to go back by boat. I that that image is so engraved in my mind. It it's it's permanently there. It's not something that that I had to go by boat, although I I I took my daughter there, of course.

Presenter5:23

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter5:24

Okay, let's pause there for the first of your eight desert island discs. What's the first one to be?

Daniel Libeskind5:28

The first one is the opening of Moses' Requiem, one of the most incredible, I think, pieces of music ever written.

Presenter5:35

And incredibly sad.

Daniel Libeskind5:36

Well, it's both. It's sad and yet glimmering in that sadness is a light that isn't coming from any expected source, and yet i it it's a source uh of the future of the requiem.

Presenter6:35

Now you wanted just that very short bit of that, Daniel Y?

Daniel Libeskind6:38

before the singing starts, because it's summarized almost like a huge novel, or it summarizes the whole world. Everything that will happen subsequently and and the singing comes in and but I I thought that those bars are really an amazing compression of everything. It's very architectural as well.

Presenter6:56

That's the opening of Mozart's Requiem, then, played by the chorus and orchestra of the Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Christopher Hogwood. So you might have been a musician, Daniel. Uh am I right in thinking you gave concerts as a really very small boy, do you?

Daniel Libeskind7:09

I I did. And that's actually one of the pieces of music I remember hearing quite often.

Presenter7:12

But this was in Poland and

Daniel Libeskind7:13

Well, I started playing on the accordion when I must have been five years old. Hardly could hold it.

Presenter7:21

So how when you performed?

Daniel Libeskind7:23

six, seven, eight, and I performed till I was sixteen, seventeen.

Presenter7:24

Eight.

Presenter7:27

But there was a reason for the accordion, wasn't there?

Daniel Libeskind7:29

There was. It's a strange and and in a way a sad reason because I wanted to play the piano and uh

Daniel Libeskind7:34

You know, after the war Poland was quite anti-Semitic and we were Jewish. We did not hide our Jewishness. Uh my parents spoke Yiddish on the streets. We kept our identity. And my parents are afraid to bring the piano to the courtyard, they told me, because of the neighbors. There was a huge uh anti-Semitism in Poland uh even during these these years.

Presenter7:51

Because you weren't born until 46, you weren't born until afterwards. But it was still that strong in the 50s.

Daniel Libeskind7:52

That's right. Very strong. And and my parents said, you know, w you know, we you know, we don't want the neighbors to see that we're bringing a piano. So we'll get you a small one inside of a suitcase which you can hide away.

Presenter8:05

An unrecognizable shape. I suppose a violin case might have been.

Daniel Libeskind8:08

A violin kick would have yeah, but this was a kind of anonymous shape. You could sneak it in and no one would say a word. And that's how surreptitiously I played a piano which was illegal.

Presenter8:19

Your parents had survived the war because they'd escaped to the Soviet Union. It's where they met because they were interned there in a concentration camp.

Daniel Libeskind8:25

But they were both in con they were first among the Nazis uh in the ghettos and then they were some among the quote lucky Jews who escaped but they were immediately rearrested. My father was put in the camps on the Volga, uh cruel labor camps, but my mother was uh shipped off to Siberia, she was in the gulag, which is described by Solzhenitsyn under the worst conditions, wearing newspapers uh on her feet in the snows. So her you know, she never quite uh recovered. But uh that was a fate. And then when they were released from these camps after the Polish government exile made a pact with Stalin, they met up. They didn't know each other. They met up in the most remote region of the world, which is in Kyrgyzstan. And I said, you know, why did you go there? They said, well, w we just walked wherever it was warmer than where we were and they wound up no, near Tibet, China. And then when the w war ended they took a nine month train ride and I was born immediately after and and the Polish borders closed and and the Cold War started.

Speaker 18:48

Uh

Presenter9:20

But they were lucky in the sense that when they got back to Poland obviously they had survived, but the rest of the family, both of their families, hadn't.

Daniel Libeskind9:27

Well lucky s yes, they were lucky in in a sense, but little did they know the the extent of devastation. My father came from a family of ten brothers and sisters, only his sister uh survived afterwards. Uh my mother also so they they my father once counted eighty eight members of the immediate family, not considering second, third cousins, perished. So, you know, it was a survival, but of a different kind.

Presenter9:48

Mm.

Presenter9:49

And you said that your boyhood in Poland beyond the family, which, as you say, was of course very small and and your music was pretty grim.

Daniel Libeskind9:56

It was grim, you know, because we had no one and we used to call aunt and uncle complete strangers. You know, I didn't grow up with any family members. And growing in Poland wasn't easy for us under communism, being who we were, not sort of blending in. We were hounded. My mother had a small shop. She was a seamstress. She was had one of the they call it private initiative and she was hounded by the police. I remember the police were always in this little shop, you know, checking who knows what for needles and pins. But it was a strange post-war life in that country.

Speaker 110:22

Uh

Presenter10:22

Yeah

Presenter10:29

So how and when did you get out?

Daniel Libeskind10:31

We left in the late fifties when when Jews were allowed to leave, even uh expelled, I would say, because the p passports were taken away uh and and we were able to leave to Israel.

Presenter10:40

He went to Israel.

Daniel Libeskind10:40

Israel, yes. Oh, it was amazing.

Presenter10:43

Contract

Daniel Libeskind10:43

Nothing could be more foreign to someone coming from that part of the world than to wind up literally in the desert. We came by train through to Venice. We caught a boat, a Greek boat, to Haifa, and then we were put in a place called Hedera, which is now a thriving city, but at that time it was literally a desert with tents. And we were totally shocked and so happy. We were in a completely new milieu, and we just couldn't believe that all these people on the streets were Jews, that the policemen were Jews, the laborers, the farmers. We just couldn't believe there was such a beautiful country there.

Daniel Libeskind11:18

Tell me about your second record. Well, the second uh piece is the Everson String Quartet playing one of my favorite. It was the B flat major fugue from the string quartet.

Presenter11:42

Uh

Daniel Libeskind11:42

Uh

Presenter12:27

The Emerson string quartet playing part of the fugue from Beethoven's String Quartet in B flat major. You switched Daniel Liebeskind from the accordion to the piano when you got to Israel and it all became possible. I mean, the keyboard it has in common, but otherwise it's a completely different instrument, isn't it? It is.

Daniel Libeskind12:44

It is. And I never actually kind of recovered because you know, I you know, the when I received my scholarship, the head of the jury was Isaac Stern. And he said to me, you know, because I was the only person competing on an instrument, everybody else was playing the piano or the violin or the cello.

Presenter12:57

He's probably the only one ever to have won that scholarship from the Accord, right?

Daniel Libeskind12:59

Probably according to it. And he said to me, you know, Mr. Lipskin, you've already totally exhausted all the possibilities. You know, you should definitely now play the piano. But really, I was an accordionist, actually. Yes. And a virtuoso on an instrument. And I played with classical musicians. I didn't play at sort of tango festivals. And I didn't play those kinds of things. I did play my own transcriptions of basically Baroque music.

Presenter13:07

But

Presenter13:09

And if

Presenter13:20

You ended up playing in Carnegie Hall. Was that on the accordion or on the piano?

Daniel Libeskind13:23

Yeah, on accordion. Absolutely accordion, town hall and the accordion. Yeah, definitely.

Presenter13:28

And is that why? Because you won the competition in Israel. I continued to play it. You won the scholarship. Is that why the family moved from Israel to New York?

Daniel Libeskind13:31

Yeah.

Daniel Libeskind13:35

No, I think there were other reasons, but but certainly uh winning the the scholarship was a wonderful thing for our family.

Presenter13:41

So two years later, you were thirteen, as we said, when you arrived i in New York.

Daniel Libeskind13:43

you said when you when you arrived i i in New York.

Presenter13:46

Um but eventually you gave it up. You stopped playing, you stopped play playing, even though you'd reached great heights playing in Carnegie Hall. Now, why?

Daniel Libeskind13:53

Right?

Daniel Libeskind13:55

I you know

Daniel Libeskind13:56

Personally, I don't think I ever really gave it up. In in some sense, what I do now, which is drawing and and building and making architecture, is an extension of a sensibility that I acquired through playing music.

Presenter14:08

But was it also, you know, a a desire to be the best at whatever you might do? Because you were playing alongside Daniel Barrenbourne for the best.

Daniel Libeskind14:13

Yeah

Daniel Libeskind14:16

Yes, sure, it was so nobody told me that you should be the best, but that was kind of part of a sensibility, not to just play as a hobbyist, not just to play for yourself, but to play for others. And and part of playing is acquiring a technique that which which cannot be uh bought somewhere. You have to do it yourself by by practicing and practicing and practicing. And and that goes actually for everything. Uh y you ca you you have to be committed to it if you are going to rise above just the medium level of of the everyday.

Presenter14:45

The everyday. So you moved away from it, uh you moved into mathematics and thence into into architecture. Do you still play?

Daniel Libeskind14:52

No, I d I don't.

Presenter14:54

When did you last touch an instrument, the accordion or the picture?

Daniel Libeskind14:56

Probably when I was about seventeen.

Presenter14:59

Not even for your own amusement.

Daniel Libeskind15:01

Uh

Presenter15:01

Yeah.

Daniel Libeskind15:01

No, it's hard. You know, I've thought about it a lot. If you if you're if you perform for audiences, it's very hard to perform for yourself. I never thought of it as something that was amusement. I never thought of music as an an amusing thing. I never thought it just something to do for fun. I thought i it's it's an extension of a certain spirit and then I can't do it if it's not that spirit.

Presenter15:22

And your music is in your architecture, as we shall discuss, and as you've said. Let's hear record number three. What's that?

Daniel Libeskind15:27

Number three is actually three fragments from ancient Greek music. These are fragments reconstructed from ancient manuscripts. So they're not inventions, but actual ancient Greek music, which is whether it's apocryphal or not, I love it.

Speaker 115:42

So he found a darling house.

Speaker 115:48

Zigonaton epica taspo.

Speaker 115:52

Dot

Speaker 216:08

So me no

Daniel Libeskind16:11

O mote.

Daniel Libeskind16:13

Even one is one blank.

Daniel Libeskind16:24

Parseni may

Speaker 116:27

Cafe totore.

Speaker 116:34

Me that I'll be most in here.

Presenter16:39

Three fragments from ancient Greek music played by the Music Atrium of Madrid conducted by Gregorio Paniagua.

Presenter16:46

You're obviously, Daniel, an idealist. I think when you met your wife you said that you'd never work for another architect, you'd never do a house renovation, and you'd never sell your ideas for money. I presume you've reneged on the last one.

Daniel Libeskind16:57

No, no, I I don't sell i ideas for money. Of course you have to support an office uh i i if you're going to build buildings, but I I followed pretty much a path that I got onto.

Presenter17:08

And certainly you've done your own thing. I mean, you taught for a long time and you taught in Milan, Harvard, Yale, Canada, Finland. How many times have you and the family moved in your thirty thirty five?

Daniel Libeskind17:16

I think my wife says she already has a PhD in in moving, is the only PhD she has. But we must admit, moved at least fifteen times and many of those times across the Atlantic back and forth.

Presenter17:27

Right.

Daniel Libeskind17:27

to different countries.

Presenter17:28

Huge number of times. And for two decades, you never built a building. And then, certainly not a kitchen extension.

Presenter17:36

And then in 1989 you won this competition to build the Jewish Museum in Berlin. You'd have been, what, 43 at the time, something like that.

Presenter17:45

Did you. Sounds like a silly question. Did you intend to win it? Or was it just, did you enter competitions because you enjoyed the exercise? No, I never.

Daniel Libeskind17:55

Entered competitions just for the exercise. I entered this one quite by chance. Somebody told me about it and said, you know, there is such a competition for a Jewish museum. What do you and I said, you're kidding. That's something that I would absolutely drop everything and and start working on. Except that it may

Presenter18:09

Except that it meant you had to move to Berlin, which must have been a very painful decision.

Daniel Libeskind18:12

Which must have been a very painful decision. Well, I didn't know. At the time when I entered the competition, I had no intention to move to Berlin. People thought we were absolutely insane. No one had an intention to build such a building. There was no money for such a building. They said, why are you here? What are you doing here?

Presenter18:25

But also your family found it rather difficult to understand.

Daniel Libeskind18:25

But also

Daniel Libeskind18:28

Of course. Well, somebody from my background. Definitely. Somebody from my background. Well, we avoided Germany before, I have to tell be be honest. We we never stayed there. We never came to visit. Could you speak German? No, I spoke Yiddish, which is close enough to German. But when we moved, we were almost disowned by our family. They thought how horrible. What are these people doing? But it it was an important move because

Presenter18:28

Of course,

Presenter18:49

My father came and

Daniel Libeskind18:51

My father came and he appreciated it and then as you know, he was already an old man in his eighties when he first came and then other members of the family came and they said, You know, you did the right thing. It time does change.

Presenter18:58

Hmm.

Presenter19:00

But what did he say when you walked him round that museum? Because when it was finally built, I mean he must have been ninety by then.

Daniel Libeskind19:07

Yes, well he was very proud and he said, you know, this is standing for something that is alive, the Jewish culture. It's here, we are standing here. And he was very proud. He was very moved by the fact that that memory and at the same time the fact that it has a future, that there were new people on the streets, that there was blue sky and the world had changed for the better. And that one wasn't stuck any longer in that image that one has that is never changing of the tragedy that that prevailed. So, yes, he saw the future coming.

Daniel Libeskind19:40

Record number four is Fat or Fat by Jancinto Schelcey.

Daniel Libeskind19:47

I like it because actually it's not a composition, more like a dissemination of a spherical space of density.

Presenter20:23

That was part of fat, or fat.

Presenter20:27

PFH there by Giacinto Skelsi, played by the Radio Television Orchestra of Krakow, conducted by Jorg Wittenbach. Does it just go on like that?

Daniel Libeskind20:37

It's a f he's a very interesting composer because he sort of broke out of the linear idea of music into a different modality and and I like it. It's a it's it's very metaphysical space that he creates. And I think one has to listen to the whole thing actually to get it complete.

Presenter20:54

Okay, so your belief, self-evidently, Daniel, is that the form of a building should not only be informed by its function but also by the history of the site it's on and the story that it's trying to tell. Describe to me how that applies to your Imperial War Museum of the North in in Salford, which opened last year.

Daniel Libeskind21:12

The Imperial War Museum is based on a on a I took a s uh I took the earth and I it's shattered and broken into shards, fragments of the spherical globe, and the fragments are re-erected in space. There's the vertical, the air shard, which is the entrance to the museum and observatory, the horizontal shard, which is convex, which is where the great museum spaces are, and the concave shard on the ship canal, which is the restaurant. Scooping down to the Manchester Show. So it's a composition that isn't just really functionalistically thought about, but architecture has to have an emotional impact as well. It's partly how these inert materials, steel and concrete, communicate to a person in a deep way. And of course, conflict is something that is not obvious.

Presenter21:35

So

Presenter21:36

Scooping down.

Presenter21:51

But if you

Daniel Libeskind21:56

So, shuttering is obvious, and what are the implications of the shuttered globe? How does it come back together? What happens?

Presenter22:01

So your design is is conceptual in that sense, and you're always looking for a a symbol. And we also mentioned that now your your music is in your buildings. I mean, one can see that in the sense of harmony. You create a kind of harmony in your buildings. How else do you see? I mean, people talk about architecture being frozen music.

Daniel Libeskind22:19

But think of the shattered globe. I I remember uh a a fragment of a letter by Mozart uh where somebody someone asked him what his music is like, and somebody says it's like a breaking of a glass on a Viennese floor.

Daniel Libeskind22:34

You know, it's kind of the whole music is compressed in that sound of vulnerability, but also the echo of what it really all means in that space. So, yes, I think music and architecture are very closely related, and certainly the echoes and feelings that a building evokes are part of its communicative power. It's certainly a very public performance, isn't it? It's a public performance, and it's not just about symbols, it's about communicating the deeper ideas, which are, of course, part of the body as well. We don't just think with our heads, we have to walk, we have feet, we have hands, we have eyes, we have ears, even the acoustical quality of a space gives a certain communication which is often underestimated.

Speaker 122:42

Hmm.

Speaker 123:07

Uh

Presenter23:07

Oh.

Speaker 123:07

Uh

Presenter23:16

And we have emotions. You know, something either hits the right spot for us or it doesn't, whether it's music or whether it's a building. And um I want to talk to you in a minute about the spiral design for the V and A because for some people of course it hasn't r hit the right spot. Let's pause for some more music. Number five now. What's that?

Speaker 123:26

Yeah.

Daniel Libeskind23:26

From other

Daniel Libeskind23:33

Number five is Vexations. It's a very lengthy piece of music. We'll hear only a fragment by Eric Sati.

Presenter24:35

Alan Marx playing Vexations from Erik Sati's mystical pages is quite hypnotic of her.

Daniel Libeskind24:41

It is. It's like a trance. It's it's only a few notes that create a complete world that continues forever because the music actually is meant to be played for twenty four hours, uh repeating. But uh it's interesting that with each repetition there's a difference. And the music is forever different even though it is based on the same principles.

Presenter24:58

It's basically

Presenter25:00

Okay, let's talk about the spiral which you designed for the extension of the V and A Museum in the Brompton Road in Kensington. You certainly got the residents and the burgers going because they they were sort of pretty let us describe it first. Would it be fair to say, you know, if you piled up some children's bricks and twisted them and then pushed them over so

Daniel Libeskind25:20

Did the men

Daniel Libeskind25:22

But it's a very elegant structure. It it's not conventional, it's not just an extrusion of a box, but it's a spiral, it's not around, but it's actually a continuous set of walls for the museum activities, which is also shaping the external space of the museum simultaneously, relating itself to the Henry Colwing, to the Western Range, to to all the buildings which are around it.

Presenter25:39

Related

Presenter25:44

Because it's it's to sit between these two arts and crafts buildings, Victorian, what, 1867?

Daniel Libeskind25:49

But those are very bold buildings and this is not just something glued on to them, but it provides a completely new public space and of course connects to those historical buildings.

Presenter25:58

It's more to do with connection than display, isn't it, apparently? You can't really display in the connection because it's such a strange shape.

Daniel Libeskind26:00

No, it's both displaying. No, no, it's because it's such a strange shape. No, no, no. We are not only going to be displaying things in a 19th or 20th century way. This is for fashion, for photography, for arts and crafts, for architecture. So we're not any longer talking just the Cartesian box hanging on a wall of a 19th century warehouse. This was supposed to be the great museum of the contemporary. And why should we now think that it's for the Queen's dusty jewels? It's for the great objects of the world. And those great social democrats, you know, what did they put on the gateway to Cromwell Road on the VA? They put the figure of inspiration and the figure of knowledge. And that's exactly what I said. The spiral is about inspiration and knowledge and takes you into those amazing collections that are second to none in the world. More music, number six.

Daniel Libeskind26:47

Number six is the Feater Tale, the fourth part of Kurt Schwitter's Ulsonata.

Presenter26:52

Tell me about it.

Daniel Libeskind26:53

The Ursunata is a kind of a poem linguistic

Daniel Libeskind26:57

To the force of the voice, actually, reinventing the language of speaking and singing.

Speaker 227:03

Grim Glimgimbim, Grim Glimm Glimbimbim, Grim Glimg Limbimbim, Grim Glimm Glimbimbim, Grim Glimg Limbimbim, Grim Glimg Limbimbim, Grim Glim Glimbimbim

Speaker 127:12

Bim, glim, glim, glim, blim, blim.

Speaker 227:15

Rim, glim, glimmy, bim, bummy, bim, bummy, bim, bummy, tilla, tilla la, tilla la la, tilla la la, tilla la la, tilla la la, tilla la la, tilla la la.

Daniel Libeskind27:22

Chill la lola, chill la la la.

Speaker 227:25

Three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three.

Presenter27:32

Part of the uh Fiatau for the fourth part of Krutzchwitter's Urzanart and that was recorded in the 1920s. I mean is this sort of stuff you play at home when you play?

Daniel Libeskind27:40

Absolutely. Not only do I play it at home, but my kids are addicted to it. My wife, you know, w walks out of the house when I put it on, but the kids love it. And of course Schroeders was a great visual artist, and it's a kind of voice on the edge of hope, desperation and human possibility.

Presenter27:57

And now then the Ground Zero project. Draw me a draw me a word picture of your design for it, if you would. It's a ring of towers to start.

Daniel Libeskind28:04

Well, the ground theory is about memory. I call it memory foundations because it first of all deals with that site of what happened there, 9-11, the fateful day when thousands of people were killed. And they have to be remembered in a profound way because the day that day changed the world. We don't travel the same way, we don't think the same way, we don't watch the news in the same way. The world has changed. That date will forever stand for a transformation. And of course, foundations, in the sense that one has to lay foundations for a resurgence of New York, for an optimistic, future-oriented 21st century city that is not going to be s second to anyone in the sense of how it's going to re-establish itself at the center of the world.

Presenter28:42

And that's why you're leaving the foundations exposed to a certain extent.

Daniel Libeskind28:45

That's right. Well, I was very moved when I went to the site and I saw those famous slurry walls, which are the foundations of the site.

Daniel Libeskind28:53

They hold back the Hudson River and they're not only the trace of the attack, but they also speak to communal values. They speak to the bedrock of New York. They speak about democracy. They speak about what withstood and continues to withstand evil acts that are perpetrated by fanatics. So there is something very moving about the site, which relates that history of New York to its future, which of course has to reconcile itself with the memorial and create a transition between the memorial and I proposed, of course, museum buildings, cultural buildings, kind of nexus that protects the memorial, gives it a spiritual quality, civic quality, and of course rises to a pinnacle in the sky, restoring the skyline and giving the public back.

Presenter29:31

And am I right in thinking that there's one public square created by some of these towers where there will be no shadow at the times between which the aeroplanes

Daniel Libeskind29:40

That's right. It's a grand public space right next to the Lower Manhattan Station, which will also be built, which I call the Wedge of Light, which is defined by two angles. 8.46 a.m. when the first tower was struck will be illuminated, and 10.28 when the second tower collapsed. At those two times, those two faces will be completely in light, throwing light back into that plaza. So it's a very special space.

Presenter30:00

Plathus

Presenter30:02

And it's being gone through now, all of your designs. I mean, is it buildable? We know this, do we? Because it's well, we're working on it. But when engineers have to look at it and actually discover whether it

Daniel Libeskind30:10

But in a

Daniel Libeskind30:12

Of course, there's a lot to to be we are at work, hard at work. We are not just sitting and and and drawing pictures. We have to work on with large teams and make it all happen.

Presenter30:22

You've got to get all the right permissions and all those things, but is it is it going to happen?

Daniel Libeskind30:25

It will happen. When will it happen? Well, there's an urgency to it because New Yorkers are not about to live with a devastated site in the middle of one of the greatest cities in the world. So, reconnecting the streets, creating a new connection in Granite Street, Fulton Street, the Wedder of Light, the Park of Heroes, the Memorial itself, the Grand Station, which brings, what, half a million people every day to that site and to Wall Street and to Lower Manhattan, and of course, restoring the skyline in the Freedom Tower. That is in my plan within four years. And I thought that one should create a nexus of cultural activities, bring culture, performing arts center, museums, so that this area shines with the light of democracy, light of the free world, and is an inspiration to people who will think forever of that event, but also connect it to the resurgence and the renaissance of New York.

Presenter30:25

Of course.

Speaker 130:51

And I

Presenter31:08

Daniel Liebeskind is moving to New York from Berlin and he's going to drive this one on just the way he did the Jewish Music.

Daniel Libeskind31:12

Come back to York, of course, because you can't do this from you have to be embroiled right in the midst of it and there's so many different stakeholders with different views and and one has to negotiate, one has to be in the center of it and and make it happen.

Presenter31:26

Echo number seven.

Daniel Libeskind31:26

Uh

Daniel Libeskind31:28

Number seven is uh the free jazz uh improvisation played by Ornette Coleman double quartet.

Presenter31:34

Why?

Daniel Libeskind31:34

It's a totally improvised music, but it's ingenious.

Presenter31:38

All your pieces are ingenious.

Daniel Libeskind31:39

Well, this this Ornette Command v free jazz variations, it is improvised but has a very powerful structure within the freedom that it offers to all the players. And it is just like a modern world.

Presenter32:47

Part of Free Jazz played by the Ornett Coleman double quartet. In the meantime, Daniel Liebeskind, you're redesigning the piano and you're designing the sets for a production of Rheingold at Coffin Garden. I mean, these are your spare time.

Daniel Libeskind33:00

Well, it's wonderful. It's all part of uh of a creative opportunity. And and why should, you know, the ring be any less important than anything else, or for that matter, the redesigning the piano?

Presenter33:09

Of course not, but it's the the energy that one admires. It's just comes naturally to you, obviously.

Daniel Libeskind33:14

Well, it's it's so much fun actually. It's so joyous to be able to be involved in in different scales, you know, from from an urban scale that is sort of unfathomable. Who has ever seen a bigger project in a greater sort of area of complexity in the world than New York? And at the same time something very specific, like if like a theatrical production or or an opera or or an instrument.

Presenter33:33

You're going to be bored out of your mind on this desertizer.

Daniel Libeskind33:38

Well, that's the challenge. Can you imagine it? No, I I think I think you can't because boredom is such an abstract idea. It's only when you when you sort of slack off that you you can be bored. But if you're on a desert island, you certainly be challenged not only to survive, but to keep yourself

Presenter33:51

Not only

Daniel Libeskind33:53

Sane.

Presenter33:54

Tell me about your last record.

Daniel Libeskind33:56

The last record is um Glenn Gould, uh my favorite pianist, playing the Goldberg variations.

Presenter34:01

Why do you want them?

Daniel Libeskind34:03

The intensity of Bach's music and the intensity of Glen Gould's performance merge together into something that is really transcendental.

Presenter35:13

Part of the ARIA, the opening of Bach's Goldberg variations played by Glenn Gould. So three questions left, Daniel. First of all, which of those eight records would you take if you could only take one of them?

Daniel Libeskind35:23

Oh, that's a tough one. It would probably be the last one.

Daniel Libeskind35:27

Because I've already listened to it to it about a million times and I haven't been bored. So I I'm sure that I could listen another eighty million times to it.

Presenter35:36

The Bach, the Goldblade variations. What about your book? We give you the Bible, we give you the complete works of Shakespeare.

Daniel Libeskind35:42

I would take a text which is actually not written with words, but a a book I have, which is a book of drawings of Piranesi. It's it's called The Prisons. Each one is is a is an imaginary text drawn in an architectural way. It's a kind of strange, almost impossible

Daniel Libeskind36:00

Dream.

Daniel Libeskind36:01

And yeah, it has always been an inspiring book for me. It doesn't have words, but it it's a complete text. You can read into it and read out of it many, many things. And and I've always thought, yeah, if I if I was to take one book, that would that would be the book.

Presenter36:14

And your luxury.

Daniel Libeskind36:16

That that's a hard one. I would probably take just a pencil and a piece of paper.

Daniel Libeskind36:21

Uh because I still love the pencil more than the computers that we have in our offices and all the modern implements. Uh and and a piece of paper, because I could do a lot. I mean, this is this would be a lot of fun to have it. I could write, I could draw, I could measure.

Presenter36:38

Daniel Liebeskin, thank you very much indeed for letting me see your Desert Island disc. Thank you.

Daniel Libeskind36:41

Uh

Presenter36:47

Uh

Presenter36:49

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.