Breaking Ground: Adventures in Life and Architecture

Rating:
Summary: Why Architects Should Stick to Building
Review: A professor of mine in grad school once told me that architects shouldn't talk about their buildings, their theories, or their process. For once an architect happens to speak, their aura vanishes as their reasonings or beliefs debunk whatever beliefs the public may have had about them.

This book is proof of that lesson.

As an avid fan of Libeskind for many years, this book actually has left a sour taste in my mouth. The stories that he tells of his family are great as they make you appreciate his background, but once he actually gets into his reasonings for designing this or revelations of that the aura vanishes.

His insight - albeit one-sided - into the selection, design, and collaboration on the Freedom Tower was interesting at first but then devulged into being a series of pages filled with ranting - almost like a personal diary of his that he decided to publish.

The recent attention surround Libeskind has placed him at the forefront of architecture, which he may rightfully deserve. However, if you truly want to appreciate Libeskind then spend the time and the effort to appreciate his work in either a portfolio or in person. His work is a better autobiography than this book is.

Rating:
Summary: Breaking Wind
Review: Architectural writing is full of "archi-speak" by those who want "to disturb", "to challenge", and "to destabilize" the world. This cliched negativity has brought architecture to a low point popularized by pseudo-theorists, many with little building experience. Libeskind is one example who delights in upsetting the status quo, not for any positive reason, but because it is the easiest path to notoriety. In contrast to the careful deliberation of ideas born out of a respect for history and developed over time, Libeskind offers throw-away superficiality as an attention-grabbing alternative. With this anarchistic and contrived frame of mind, Libeskind's life story is trumpeted. His discredited ideologies are given a last-ditch airing, even as his popular and professional credibility continues to sink. (Libeskind's planned destruction of the facade of London's Victoria and Albert Museum was canned after lengthy protests. New Yorkers were quicker to learn that his Ground Zero "design" was all hype and a few flashy gimmicks that proved unworkable.) A host of personalities, including Izthak Perlman, Richard Meier, the entire British race, and, of course, Larry Silverstein and other of Libeskind's own clients, (how professional is that!!!) are all attacked to fuel the altar of Libeskind's out-sized ego and vengeful nature. Libeskind - who compares himself to Mozart !!! - is proof that slick branding frequently triumphs over substance. - Spare yourself this awful book and Libeskind's lecture about why he believes he is better than you and everyone else.

Rating:
Summary: A renowned architect explores ideas about tragedy and hope
Review: Daniel Libeskind is a successful, controversial, and influential architect whose most famous commission is the World Trade Center site. He was born in Poland in 1946, and his family immigrated to Israel eleven years later. He once shared a Tel Aviv concert hall with another child prodigy, Itzhak Perlman. Itzhak would, of course, continue his musical education, but Daniel's field would instead be art --- or so he thought. Two years later the Libeskind family settled in New York. Daniel loved to draw and spent most of his free time doing just that. His mother, a practical woman and a Holocaust survivor, steered her son toward architecture. She felt that he would not be able to support himself as an artist but could not have known then that her advice would have such a huge impact on her son's life.

A great deal of BREAKING GROUND describes Daniel's theories about architecture: that buildings, like people, have a body and a soul, that light is an extremely important element to consider when designing a building, and that buildings truly reflect history. He concentrates on what the building will feel like rather than what it will look like. Unorthodox in his approach to the design process itself, he readily admits to not quite understanding how he chooses what to design.

When the book was being written in July of 2004 Daniel already had three completed museum buildings to his credit as well as thirty-five projects being worked on in Milan, San Francisco, Hong Kong and London, among other cities.

After a fierce and lengthy competition Daniel's firm was chosen as master planner for the World Trade Center site. Because of what that famous parcel of land represents to so many people, a great amount of public controversy occurred during the exhaustive selection of architects and designs. Thousands of people gave their opinions on what should be on that site as well as how the memorial should look. It gave Daniel instant name recognition with the general public who might otherwise never know of him.

When Daniel visited Ground Zero he insisted upon going down into the vast crater, nicknamed "the bathtub," which is seventy feet deep in some spots. There he encountered the slurry wall, a virtual dam and foundation whose purpose was to keep the Hudson River at bay. Though the devastation on 9/11 had been horrific, if the slurry wall had been breached the subway system would have flooded as well. The slurry wall and the pit spoke to Daniel. He immediately decided that it must be visible and incorporated into the design. He also insisted that Freedom Tower be 1,776 feet tall. In New York, a huge city that lays things out in a grid pattern, Daniel wanted a circle of buildings of various heights. That circle itself was controversial.

No matter what one thinks of Daniel personally or professionally, he has emerged as a brilliant architect, a visionary, and a celebrity. It will be very interesting to see what the victims' families, 9/11 survivors, New York City residents, and the rest of the country think of Daniel's final interpretation at the World Trade Center site.

--- Reviewed by Carole Turner

Rating:
Summary: More Hissy Fit that Biography
Review: Hiding behind the ploy of biography, Libeskind gives a biased version of the Ground Zero fiasco all the while criticizing the other players in a forum where they have no chance of rebuttal. Libeskind barely stops short of hair-pulling and face-scratching in his catty and cowardly attack. Similar stories of his other projects in London and Berlin left me with the impression that this very pretentious man has some misguided notions of his own importance and intellectual capabilities. Unfortunately, most of this poorly written account reads like tabloid journalism and Libeskind's relentless self-congratulation was extremely annoying. Hardly a life worth emulating or even knowing about. This ego-driven exercise is easily the worst book I've read this year .

Rating:
Summary: breaking greatness
Review: I read "Breaking Ground" last week and thoroughly enjoyed it...weaving autobiographical elements with contemporary accounts of the Ground Zero drama kept me tuned-in from start to finish. He has had, and is having, a most dynamic life. And, I can see where Nina Libeskind has been the catalyst for success...it's a case where one plus one equals infinity...she has been instrumental in deciphering the political maze...BRAVO! I also kept searching as I read for some connections between Daniel's talent and his background; and although there are common threads, the big factor seems to be a deep inner sense of a place and an ability to translate that sense into a physical expression.

Rating:
Summary: Don't believe the critics, Breaking Ground is excellent!
Review: I really do not understand all of the negative comments about Libeskind's Breaking Ground! As someone who is hoping to go to architecture school, I found this book to be particularly inspiring. The book provides an entirely new perspective on what architecture really should and can mean to people everywhere. Libeskind's projects are magnificent in my estimation. Whether you like them or not,(or like Libeskind or not), you cannot deny that they have a heartfelt social meaning that clearly did not come from a man other reviewers have referred to as a "con artist". I found the sections about the Jewish Museum Berlin to be especially interesting. The design of this building expresses through architecture the pain and utter horror of the Halocaust. People such as Libeskind do not spend 12 years of their lives designing such a project for selfish gain, they do it for the advancement of humanity, hoping that someday people will be able to grasp the immense scope of the destruction of 14 million Jewish lives. I find Libeskind to be a fantastic story teller and a man of vision. I believe that you will too. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an open mind and a lack of overblown opinions about what art should be.

Rating:
Summary: Big Head - Small Mind
Review: It is hard to know what Libeskind hoped to accomplish with this oddball book. By his own admission, he is "more cornball than cosmopolite" (page 159), and granted no one will ever use the word "sophisticated" to describe either Daniel or Nina Libeskind. But most of this disjointed and confused story reads like a schoolgirl's diary hastily scribbled beneath the bedclothes. And with all the insecurity of such diaries, it is replete with smug and nasty comments about people Libeskind feels have been mean to him, or who have been critical of his work. Curiously, for a man who too frequently professes to be a genius, his own book portrays mostly him as puerile and petulant. Much of this book reveals Libeskind's deep-seated bitterness and jealousy towards his professional peers. He claims his internships with Richard Meier and Peter Eisenman were beneath him and he stormed out of their offices (pages 41 and 42) when asked to do the routine tasks that inform the careers of most novice practitioners. Even when describing his own designs, the writing is disappointingly inane. "MY building would not be about toilets", he proclaims a bit too proudly about his Jewish Museum project, implying that most other architects and buildings are only about lavatories. And, of the Nussbaum Museum he declares to his own amazement - "I called this project `the museum without an Exit', because for Nussbaum, there was no exit, (from Nazi persecutions). Defensive and embarrassing writing like this was common in this bumbling and very unsatisfying book.

I bought this biography looking for a glimpse into the mind of a supposedly creative person. What I got was a close look at a pompous architect who spent so much of his time bragging about himself, that he seems oblivious to humanity around him. Given how little Libeskind has actually built, such delusional arrogance should be embarrassing, but sensitivity or discretion are not the author's strong suit. The book lurches awkwardly between incessant ego-tripping, quasi-intellectual posturing, and cliched, self-pitying stories intended to suggest that the author is thoughtful, reflective and has learned from life experiences. But it all comes across as coldly calculated and patronizing. Somehow, one of life's lessons that the "genius" Daniel Libeskind never learned, is that compliments are really meaningful only if they come from someone other than himself.


Rating:
Summary: The Other Holocaust
Review: Libeskind's story opens promisingly with an account of his first view of the Statue of Liberty and closes, like a self-help book, with an admonition to "dream". It's all a bit syrupy, but there is nothing particularly wrong with that. Unfortunately the stuff in between - not to put too fine a point on it - is drivel.

No immigrant's life is complete without a history of struggle, so Libeskind (who was born in 1946), gets down to business and quickly plays "the Auschwitz card", tastelessly invoking the names of 85 relatives who suffered in Germany or died in the death camp. The fact that these lives were taken before he was born, and that he never knew them, is deftly sidestepped by Libeskind so bent on is he on establishing credibility as a suffering artist. You don't have to be a Jew to be offended by this cheap, opportunistic appropriation of a tragic event. It is simply unlikely that the lessons casually borrowed from the suffering of murdered souls (like so much jewelry casually pocketed from the dead) have been understood well enough to have made any real impact on Libeskind's designs.

But this book is not about design. It is about an ego raging out of control. The story plummets downwards as Libeskind takes on the task of redressing any perceived slight or emotional wound that he has ever endured. It is a daunting task, for the list is a very long one, and the reader will find himself enmeshed in chapter upon chapter of retribution. Libeskind's fantasy death camp may have gratified his need for revenge, but I was left wondering how a man could become so disliked in the first place. To hear Daniel Libeskind tell it, these tribulations were something of a personal Holocaust, one that has qualified him -and only him - to fully understand the tragedy of September 11. Once again, a claim for empathy with the victims is inappropriately assumed and the memory of the relatives he lost is diminished by the bizarre comparison.

From there, a most of the book is taken up with Libeskind's battle to control the Ground Zero project in New York. Not surprisingly, he portrays himself as the good guy, while property developer Larry Silverstein and his architect, David Childs, are clearly the evil guys. It is an easy distinction to make when writing the book about yourself, but the failure to flesh out the story with real developed characters made for childish reading. Wallowing in self-pity, Libeskind becomes a victim of his own chutzpah and impregnable self-esteem. I was however, amused to read Libeskind mentioning that at one point David Childs "...gave me the patronizing look reserved for the village idiot." It is tempting to suggest that if Daniel Libeskind looked at himself in the mirror more truthfully, he might very well find the Village Idiot looking back.


Rating:
Summary: Shallow & Hypocritical
Review: The architecture of Daniel Libeskind is of the ephemerally faddish kind, high on jarring angles and attention-grabbing formal gimmicks, but very low on substance of architectural merit or of any lasting significance. His biography is similarly contrived and, like his work, lacks maturity and integrity. A few examples will suffice. In this book, Libeskind expresses disapproval and horror at the Holocaust, but seems happy enough to run Studio Libeskind on the sweat of unpaid interns, despite being paid millions for his Ground Zero work. (He also capitalized on the tragedy by milking New York City for almost $7,000 in limo fares although his office is within walking distance of the site!!!.) For Libeskind, abuse of fellow human beings must be OK if it serves his own greed and other objectionable purposes. And, as others here have commented, Libeskind wasn't willing to live with his own dispensible designs. He was recently exposed in the press for hiring another architect to design his Tribeca loft. Like all con artists, Libeskind comes across as charming, even sincere, but it doesn't take much research to figure out that Daniel and Nina Libeskind are as shallow and as phony as the worst examples of self-promoting but hypocritical "stars" out there. In the face of mounting criticism of his dubious architectural ideas, and a losing streak in competitions and projects (DunLaoghaire Pier Competition , V&A Museum, etc.), the Libeskinds have been busy on the TV and Press Release circuit trying to stem the flow of bad press and negative criticism. This trite memoir tries to reinvent Daniel as a sensitive, caring individual, but the facts speak louder than his large and tiresome story. The Libeskinds are reaping the rewards of the seeds they have so carelessly sown. And if Libeskind's architecture is not good enough for his own family, maybe our cities don't need it either. As a study in hypocrisy, Libeskind's book might have something to offer, but otherwise buy into the myth with a very large grain of salt at the ready.

Rating:
Summary: A Controversial Genius
Review: The extreme critics of this book are clearly allied with the powerful forces that have attempted to place roadblocks to Libeskind's brilliant designs. Nothing remarkable has ever been achieved , or accepted without some opposition from those whose minds are ossified. This is a remarkable account of how a brilliant mind conceives new ideas and the courage it takes to realize those ideas. Read it and "see the light" as Libeskind sees it!