The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Daniel Libeskind · a museum building for the history of Jews in Germany, with no entrance of its own, scored with its garden, its tower and the underground route by which it is entered · a long building folded in a sharp zigzag, clad in zinc and cut by narrow windows slashed across it at angles, reached only by a stair down from the baroque Prussian court house beside it into an underground level · below ground three straight, sloping corridors crossing: the Axis of Continuity, ending at a long, steep stair up to the exhibition floors; the Axis of Exile, ending at a door out to the Garden of Exile, tall concrete pillars on a grid on tilted ground, trees growing from their tops; the Axis of the Holocaust, ending at the heavy door of the Holocaust Tower, a tall, unheated concrete void, unlit but for a slit high up · a straight line of bare concrete voids cutting through the zigzag from top to bottom, crossed by bridges on the exhibition floors and mostly closed to entry; one, the Memory Void, entered at ground level and holding Menashe Kadishman’s installation Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) · Lindenstraße, Kreuzberg, Berlin · competition won 1989, completed 1999, opened with its exhibitions in September 2001 · Daniel Libeskind, as an extension to the Berlin Museum · as it stands, in use as the Jewish Museum Berlin, its first permanent exhibition replaced by a second
Mode
A museum building as memorial; the history of Jews in Berlin carried by plan, section and route, with no entrance of its own
Mythos
The descent beneath the old house into the dark; the crossroads of three fates; exile in a garden out of reach; the void as the empty centre; the long ascent toward light
Phase
Competition won in 1989 as an extension to the Berlin Museum; completed 1999 and open to visitors while still empty; opened with its exhibitions in September 2001 as an independent Jewish Museum; the first permanent exhibition later replaced
Presentation
A zigzag clad in zinc and slashed with windows; an underground entry from the baroque court house; three sloping axes ending at a stair, a garden and a tower; a straight line of concrete voids crossed by bridges on the exhibition floors
Register
Dread more than beauty; cold, dark and disorienting below ground and at the voids, a museum with difficult walls above
Scale
One building, its garden and its tower; two millennia of Jews in Germany, the city and the state, death, exile and memory
Governing Proposition
In the city from which its Jews were deported, a museum of their history was given a building with no door of its own. The wager of the design is that architecture can carry a history by what it withholds: entered only through the old Prussian court house and down into the dark, divided below ground into three roads of which only one leads up, and cut through on every floor by an emptiness that cannot be entered or filled and must be crossed again and again.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
In 1989 Daniel Libeskind won the competition for an extension to the Berlin Museum under the title Between the Lines. He was an architect known for drawings and teaching, and he had no building to his name. His drawings had been shown the year before at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among the deconstructivist work exhibited there. The building went up through the 1990s, in the reunified city, and was completed in 1999.
The museum building of the 1980s was a neutral container, white rooms in sequence made to frame what was shown in them. The memorial was a monument, a figure or an inscription. Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) had already opened the abstract memorial. The design at Lindenstraße refused both the neutral container and the monument. It made a museum whose building would be its first and largest exhibit, and made it of absence: no front door, and spaces that cannot be entered.
The title describes the plan. Two lines run through the building: one folded and continuous, the zigzag of the building itself; one straight and broken, a line of voids that cuts through every fold. By the architect’s account the lines of the windows were drawn from a matrix connecting the Berlin addresses of Jewish and non-Jewish figures of the city’s history, and his named sources include Schoenberg’s unfinished Moses und Aron, the memorial book of Berlin’s deported Jews and Benjamin’s One-Way Street. The derivation is not visible as such in the building. The broken Star of David often read in the zigzag is the architect’s gloss as well, and reads as allusion; the building carries its meaning without it.
Movement II
The new building has no entrance of its own. The visitor enters the Kollegienhaus, the baroque Prussian court building beside it on Lindenstraße, and goes down a stair into an underground level. Only from there is the new building reached. The court house is not Libeskind’s work; the plan uses it as the threshold, and it stands as the continuous surface of the city’s history from which the stair breaks away.
The plan says one thing before any room is reached: that the history of Jews in Berlin cannot be entered except through the history of the German city. It is not given a front door. It is reached under the old house, from below, in the dark. This is disclosure through space, and it holds for a visitor who has read nothing about the building, since there is no other way in.
From the street the new building is a long fold of zinc, turning in a sharp zigzag beside the court house, its surface cut by narrow windows slashed across it at angles. The slashes read as wounds, and the zinc ages to grey. The exterior is striking rather than elevated. What the building has to say is said inside it, and most of all below the ground.
Movement III
Below ground three straight corridors cross one another, each sloping, each narrowing toward its end. They are named, and the names are the history: the Axis of Continuity, the Axis of Exile and the Axis of the Holocaust. They are three roads of fate, chosen or not chosen. Only one leads up into the life of the museum.
The Axis of Exile ends at a door out to the Garden of Exile. Tall concrete pillars stand on a grid on ground tilted in two directions, trees growing from their tops, out of reach. The ground unsettles balance, and the sky is cut into narrow lanes under the foliage. It is a garden in no ordinary sense. The Axis of the Holocaust ends at the heavy door of the Holocaust Tower, a tall concrete void, unheated, unlit but for a slit high up. When the door closes behind the visitor the room is cold, dark and high, the daylight out of reach and the sound of the city audible beyond the walls.
The Axis of Continuity ends at the Stair of Continuity, long and steep and crossed overhead by concrete beams, which climbs to the exhibition floors. It is the road that leads up, and it is long and hard. Take one axis away and one of the three fates goes untold; take away the Tower or the Garden and the roads end in walls. The underground level is the building’s most complete statement, and nothing on it is decorative.
Movement IV
A straight line of voids cuts through the zigzag from the top of the building to the bottom. The voids are bare concrete, unheated, and mostly closed to entry. On the exhibition floors they lie across the visitor’s path, and every route through the galleries meets them; they are crossed on bridges, looked into, and not entered. At the centre of the building is an absence that cannot be entered or filled, and it must be crossed again and again.
One void is entered, at ground level: the Memory Void. It holds Menashe Kadishman’s installation Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves), metal faces lying on the floor. The visitor walks on them, and they sound underfoot, and the sound fills the bare shaft. The installation was fitted into the building in its life as the museum and is part of the one work.
The voids are the building’s spine and the measure of its cost. They make the galleries hard rooms: cut by voids and by slashed windows, set at angles, giving their light and their walls to the idea before the object. On these floors the register falls to that of a museum with difficult walls, and the archetype thins to an angle. The form knows one thing completely, and the museum’s other knowledge awkwardly.
Movement V
From 1999 the completed building was open to visitors while it was still empty, and for two years people came to walk a museum that held no object. What they walked was the form: the descent, the three roads, the Tower, the Garden, the stair, and the voids across the path. In September 2001 it opened with its exhibitions, as an independent Jewish Museum, to tell two millennia of the history of Jews in Germany.
The first permanent exhibition was widely found to crowd the building and to contradict it, a second law fitted into the first. It has since been replaced, and the second exhibition has had to negotiate the same walls. The building has been in continuous use as museum and memorial since it opened, and it is among the most visited museums in Berlin; it is the image by which the institution is known. The arguments have followed it: whether it was better empty, whether architecture can represent the Holocaust or only its absence, and what a Jewish museum in Germany should say.
Its reach has gone wide. The void as a memorial figure recurs, as far as the reflecting absences of the National September 11 Memorial; the museum building as an experience to be undergone rather than a frame became common, and Bilbao shares with it the credit for the museum as icon; and Libeskind’s own commissions followed in a line, the Imperial War Museum North, the Military History Museum at Dresden and the master plan for the World Trade Center. The angled and slashed manner spread too, often as style without the argument. A quarter of a century on, the zigzag, the axes, the Garden, the Tower and the voids stand as they were built.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on structure, purpose and site. The parts that carry the memorial argument resist the subtractive test almost wholly. Remove the voids and nothing in the building is absent, which is what it exists to say. Remove the underground entry and the Jewish history of Berlin gets a front door of its own, which the plan denies it. Remove one axis and one of three fates, continuity, exile or death, goes untold; remove the Tower or the Garden and the axes end in walls. What yields is the museum. The fold of the zigzag and the angle of the slashes are fixed by a private derivation that the visitor cannot read and the use does not require, and the galleries, cut by voids and slashes, fight every exhibition put in them.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Disclosure through space, credited as fully as words. Three things can be stated, and hold. That the history of Jews in Berlin cannot be entered except through the history of the German city: the building has no door but the baroque Prussian court house, and is reached underground. That this history is not one story but three roads, of which only one, continuity, leads up into the life of the museum, and that one long, steep and hard. And that at its centre is an absence that cannot be entered or filled and must be crossed again and again. That is a meaning about a nation’s history, made in plan and section. Held below the top because part of it is carried by names and by the architect’s text, and the disorientation of the angled galleries is atmosphere as much as disclosure.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Elevation here is dread more than beauty, and its height is near the top. It comes when the Tower door closes behind the visitor and the concrete room is cold, dark and high, a slit of daylight out of reach and the city audible beyond; in the Garden of Exile, where the tilted ground and the pillars unsettle balance and the sky is cut into narrow lanes under foliage; in the Memory Void, where the visitor walks on metal faces and the sound fills the bare shaft; at the foot of the Stair of Continuity, under its crossing beams; and on the bridges, over voids that cannot be entered. Frequency falls in the galleries, where the register is that of a museum with difficult walls, and the zinc exterior is striking rather than elevated.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Myth is built into plan and section, and load-bearing on the underground level. The descent: entry is a going down beneath the old house into the dark, the underworld road before any ascent. The crossroads: three paths of fate, sloping and narrowing, chosen or not chosen. Exile: a garden that is a garden in no ordinary sense, its ground pitched and its trees out of reach on their pillars. The void: absence as the building’s spine, the empty centre. And the long ascent of the Stair of Continuity toward light. Everything stays particular: this street, this court house, these names. Held lower because the most cited figure, the broken Star of David in the zigzag, is the architect’s gloss and reads as allusion, and above ground the archetype thins to an angle.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The inheritance: the museum as a neutral container of white rooms in sequence, the ideal of the museum building of the 1980s; the memorial as monument, figure or inscription; and, on the other side, the abstract memorial already opened by Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982), and the deconstructivist drawings shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1988, Libeskind’s among them. The departure: a museum whose building is its first and largest exhibit, made of absence, with no front door and spaces that cannot be entered; architecture asked to bear a history and an ethics, not to frame them. The stake was extreme: an architect known for drawings and teaching, with no building to his name when he won, and a form that refused the museum’s ordinary use. Held below the top because the abstract memorial and the vocabulary had both been opened.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Substitute a neutral museum and almost nothing the work knows survives. The visitor lives the history as the form gives it: the descent, the choice of roads, the dead end of the Tower behind its door, the vertigo of exile in the Garden, the long climb to continuity, and on every floor the void across the path, crossed on a bridge, looked into and never entered. The building makes the visitor perform absence, not read about it, and that it was open to visitors empty before any object was installed shows how much of the knowledge the form holds alone. Held below the top where the form ignores part of its purpose: the galleries are hard to exhibit in, and the first permanent exhibition was widely found to crowd and contradict the building.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Evidence over promise, over about a quarter of a century. The building has been read as memorial architecture against the counter-monument; as a test of whether architecture can represent the Holocaust or only its absence; as the founding of the narrative museum building; in the long argument over whether it was better empty; through Libeskind’s own sources, Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, Benjamin’s One-Way Street and the memorial book of Berlin’s deported Jews, which keep generating readings of the slashes and the zigzag; and in the institution’s disputes over what a Jewish museum in Germany should say. The voids yield on return. Held lower because the record is short, the governing thesis is grasped at once, and much of the reading is of the architect’s text rather than of the fabric.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Standing since 1999 and open with its exhibitions since 2001, so force and reach are scored together. The intrinsic force is a reorganisation of what a museum building can be: architecture as narrative and memory, absence as programme, the visitor’s movement as the meaning. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the void as a memorial figure recurs, to the reflecting absences of the National September 11 Memorial; the museum building as an experience to be undergone rather than a frame became common; Libeskind’s own commissions followed, the Imperial War Museum North, the Military History Museum at Dresden, the master plan for the World Trade Center; and the angled, slashed manner spread widely, often as style without the argument, which discounts the reach. Bilbao shares the credit for the museum as icon, and delayed influence is still arriving.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence and use, then fabric: twenty-seven years since completion, twenty-five open with exhibitions. The form survives whole: zigzag, voids, axes, Garden and Tower are as built and wholly legible, and the building has outlived the moment of its competition, the end of the divided city and the deconstructivist debate, without reading as a period piece. Use has been continuous, as museum and memorial, and presence is wide: it is among the most visited museums in Berlin, and the image by which the institution is known. The charge is on use: the exhibitions have been rebuilt once, as the museum works out how to live in the building, and a quarter of a century is a short demonstration. The presence is the institution’s as much as the form’s.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Judged as command of building, structure and engineering included. The making is load-bearing at the memorial points: the Tower’s proportion, door, slit and sound, where nothing is decorative and everything acts on the body; the Garden’s double tilt and grid, exact enough to unsettle balance; the voids carried through a twisting building as one straight figure, top to bottom, crossed by bridges; the Stair of Continuity with its crossing beams; the zinc skin, its slashes reading as wounds. That a drawing of lines was built at this scale in concrete, the voids intact, is a real command. The costs: the engineering extends little; the galleries are compromised as rooms, light and wall given to the idea before the object; and the matrix of addresses governs the fabric without being felt as construction.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the baroque entrance hall of the court house and the Holocaust Tower. They obey one law, the law of the competition’s title: a rupture between lines. The baroque house is the continuous surface of the city’s history; the stair down from it is the break; the axes, the voids and the Tower follow from that break, and the Garden is the same law turned outward, ground tilted off its grid. Zinc, slash, angle and void govern every part of the new building, and the line of voids cuts every floor by one geometry. The range is wide, from the court house to the dark of the Tower. Held below the top because the exhibitions are a second law fitted into the first and visibly at odds with it, and because the slash, repeated everywhere, narrows toward a manner.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Seven orders are held: history, two millennia of Jews in Germany with the Holocaust at its centre; the city, its addresses in the slashes, its court house, its sound in the Tower; the state, the Prussian building through which the Jewish history must pass, and a nation’s public account of itself; death, in the Tower and its axis; exile, in the Garden; the sacred, as Jewish tradition and as the absence of a community; and memory, in the body’s disorientation at the voids. One plan places each: death and exile below, the city and the state at the threshold, continuity above. What holds the axis is what is absent or left to the exhibitions: the family, labour, daily life, the natural order except as the Garden’s emblem. The lives the void stands for are present only as absence: the point of the form, and its limit.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.6 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Swerve at 9.1 and The Living Form at 9.0, then The Unconcealment, Pressure on Tradition and The Inner Law at 8.7. A museum whose building is its first exhibit, made of absence, by an architect with nothing built; a form the visitor performs, the descent, the three roads and the void crossed on every floor, which held its knowledge while the building stood empty; a meaning about a nation’s history stated in plan and section; a reach that runs from the void as memorial figure to the museum as experience; and one law, a rupture between lines, governing everything from the baroque threshold to the Tower.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.9: history, the city, the state, death, exile, the sacred and memory are placed in one plan, while the family, labour, daily life and the natural order are absent or left to the exhibitions. Below the rest, The Inevitable at 8.2 and The Bottomless Well at 8.3: the memorial parts are compelled, but the museum yields to a private derivation and fights its exhibitions; and the record is a quarter of a century long, its thesis grasped at once. The facts are one: the building knows one thing completely, and it is a museum that must also know others.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.2 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.0, The Inner Law at 8.7, The Made at 8.5, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is met on all five: The Swerve at 9.1, The Unconcealment at 8.7, Pressure on Tradition at 8.7 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, and The Imperishable meets it exactly at 8.5. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.2, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.9. Every summit condition is met; the work is held below the summit by its aggregate alone, 8.6 against 9.0.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the building as it stands and of its documented concept, plan, section and history. The work scored is Daniel Libeskind’s building for the Jewish Museum Berlin on Lindenstraße, with the Garden of Exile and the Holocaust Tower that belong to its plan and the underground route that joins it to the Kollegienhaus, through which alone it is entered. Under the rule that all one work includes what was fitted into it in its life, Menashe Kadishman’s installation Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) in the Memory Void and the permanent exhibitions, the first of 2001 and the one that replaced it, are scored with the building; what stands now in the galleries is the second exhibition. The Kollegienhaus, a baroque Prussian court building, is scored as the entrance and threshold the plan uses, not as Libeskind’s work. The collections are context and are not credited, and the institution’s other buildings are not part of the work. Nothing is quoted. The words on the page that are not the desk’s are names and titles: the competition title, Between the Lines; the names of the three axes, the Stair of Continuity, the Garden of Exile, the Holocaust Tower and the Memory Void; and the titles of the architect’s named sources. The derivation of the windows from a matrix of addresses and the broken Star of David are given as the architect’s account and are not credited. Facts that could not be verified, among them the dimensions and floor areas of the building, the height of the Tower, the number of pillars in the Garden, their planting and what fills them, the number of faces in Shalekhet, the date and architect of the Kollegienhaus, later additions to it, the date of the second permanent exhibition, the number of visitors to the empty building, the political history of the commission, the order in which the architect’s buildings were completed, the names of critics who have written on it, and the condition of the fabric, are not given.