Daniel Libeskind -Polish Jew supporting Poland

and wants to start next project in Gdańsk

God bless Polish Jews :)

Oooh, looking nice! Polish cities are gonna look good! My only worry is that these beauties might be placed just across the street from some commie apartment blocks, like the new stadium in Bydgoszcz. :/

Looks terrible and inefficient

What a terrible monstrosity... Looks like a collapsed tower hit by a meteor..

it look sreally great and I pass it by at least once a week LOL

I think for once I may agree with you. It looks like either the remains of the WTC towers,or some scene from Terminator 2......You could only get away with that sort of crap in countries that havnt seen the skis overhead filled with nazi bombers.

it did look strange at the beginning but now i tis part of the cityLOL.

I can see what you mean M',second time Im seeing its a grower....
I guess it all depends where you put these things. It would be out of place dumped in the old town but swap it for stalins birthday cake and Im sure people would soon get used to it.

Wow... never heard of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal (last time I was in Toronto was 2004).... what an awesome building...

Hadn't heard of him. Interesting and unique: I think a skyline like this inspires free thinking. Thanks for posting.

daniel libeskind is on of the most controversally discussed architects of our time. for this alone i am not surprised about the mixed reactions on here as well...

the interesting thing is that similar to peter eisenmann (the one who built the holocaust memorial in berlin) he has a very long theoretical background.

both started very late in their carreer to actually build. but both are equally genius at it due to the years of study and theory...

in libeskind's case it might not surprise that his first realised building was the jewish museum in berlin (berlin rules apparently... ;) ), which was equally polarising opinions as can be seen here...

modern architecture has to be seen and felt to be understood. that is even more important the more away you design from the stereotypical (and mostly boring) developers architecture. there is more to it than making some quick money. at the very end architects create the environment we all live in. the more important it is that they pay attention while doing it and create an environment that still works a few decades down the line...

Poland needs new image, such projects are going to make this place more representative. Warsaw is city with planed tall center that is why there are so many interesting projects.

- Dear oh dear.


- These 'commie blocks' aren't any worse to live in than the buildings people live in elsewhere in the world, e.g. in US and UK.

I wonder how much dough did Mr Libeskind collect for his rather mediocre projects? Why is it an American architect who designs buildings in Poland and is paid big money for it rather than a Polish or EU architect?


- He seems to me a mediocrity as an architect. The buildings he has designed in Poland are lacklustre and ugly.


- Do you mean the bunch of concrete slabs sticking out the ground? But it's a total monstrosity - from an aesthetical viewpoint.


- The monstrous 'Holokaust' memorial in Berlin is supposed to be evidence of genius?! Oh dear. I've heard some Germans show their aesthetical appreciation to this evidence of 'genius' by using it as a toilet.

:)

this is how the business works.
when the wall came down in berlin, it wasn't the local architects that where asked to rebuild their city. it was the international big players. simply because the government of that time thought this way berlin would appear on the map alongside london, paris, rom and suchlike...

libeskind, by the way, is very clever in marketing his jewish heritage to get the prestigous jobs.

one has to understand that architecture is the mother of all arts so even by todays standards a good building (as the whole built environment actually) still has to deliever a bit more than pure shelter. sure. for those who do not bother to learn and understand the underlying ideas and principles which lead to the design of libeskinds projects (or the the above mentioned peter eisenmann), they might seem dull...


you are so wrong... (in my opinion)

i think it is just great...

- In case of Libeskind and the other mediocrity it shouldn't.


- I've no doubt he is.


- Come on, Falkster, do you really believe I'm such a numb guy I appreciate a bulding in terms of its utility only? The fruits of those two fellows' 'genius' offend my sense of harmony, or aesthetical sense.


- Is that what a fellow countryman of the great Gropius, and an architect himself, should really think about this monstrosity? Aren't you merely being politically correct when you're praising it so high? - The 'monument' brings to mind a bunch of carton boxes waiting to be taken onto the truck when one is moving out. It's totally dull, trivial and ugly. No wonder some folks feel like having a pi$$ upon it.

:)

i didn't mean that and if i came across like that, i apologise...


THIS is probably the root of the problem. as an architect one certainly has a different view on such things.
i simply like the monument for the boldness of the idea and thew minimalism of its realisation...
many non-architects probably won't see that, and it's okay. imagine we all had the same opinion...

in my opinion architecture, as the fine arts, has to get away from taking itself so extremely serious. in that sense i like the stuff that is a bit out of the ordinary.

i don't want to convince anyone, as i believe we need the variety of views on things. you will never be able to please everyone anyway...


most certainly not! we don't know each other well enough yet, so you can't know. but with my statement of libeskind's clever jewishness marketing i gave a hint of criticism already...

I'm curious how many Australians were asking why some Polish architect designed olympic stadium in Sydney? Why not some Australians, perhaps Aborigines? I guess you want old good Soviet realities back again. Palace of Culture was designed by people from "our camp".

What is his payroll? There are enough polish architects on the streets with bright heads and a heart for modernism who would be happy to get a wellpaid government job.

This is a Jewish architechtural 'view of the future' for Poland...quite avant-garde...have you ever seen the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao Spain?

ooops! didn't notice that at the first time reading it.
Libeskind was actually born and grew up in Lodz... which makes him polish, i guess.
notablebiographies.com/news/Li-Ou/Libeskind-Daniel.html


that would be Frank Gehry. fantastic iconic building that helped initiating the recent regeneration of bilbao significantly. insiders already speak of Bilbao as the new Barcelona. tough call!

shows what an important role architecture can play...