Daniel Libeskind Quotes

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

Cities are the greatest creations of humanity.

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

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

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

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

— Daniel Libeskind

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

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

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

— Daniel Libeskind

It's a fantastic responsibility and a wonderful moment.

— Daniel Libeskind

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

— Daniel Libeskind

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

— Daniel Libeskind

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

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

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.

— Daniel Libeskind

“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.”

— Daniel Libeskind

We will work with everybody for the good of New York.

— Daniel Libeskind

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

— Daniel Libeskind

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

— Daniel Libeskind

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

— Daniel Libeskind

“Architecture is not based on concrete and steel, and the elements of the soil. It's based on wonder.”

— Daniel Libeskind

In a strange way, architecture is really an unfinished thing, because even though the building is finished, it takes on a new life. It becomes part of a new dynamic: how people will occupy it, use it, think about it.

— Daniel Libeskind

Our lives are complex; our emotions are complex; our intellectual desires are complex. I believe that architecture ... needs to mirror that complexity in every single space that we have, in every intimacy that we possess.

— Daniel Libeskind

“I think to be creative you have to resist taking the easy path.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“Architecture is not just for the moment, it is not just for the next fashion magazine”

— Daniel Libeskind

“The official name of the project is 'Jewish Museum' but I have named it 'Between the Lines' because for me it is about two lines of thinking, organization and relationship. One is a straight line, but broken into many fragments, the other is a tortuous line, but continuing indefinitely.”

— Daniel Libeskind

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.

— Daniel Libeskind

“We live in a time of renaissance ... cities are coming back to life, after a long neglect.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“And, yes, I love the process of building.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“What is a habit? It's just a shackle for ourselves.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“Call Berlin. Drop everything we're doing. I have a complete vision of what should be.”

— Daniel Libeskind

“Buffer between commercial, memorial and retail space.”

— Daniel Libeskind

I believe that the idea of the totality, the finality of the master-plan, is misguided. One should advocate a gradual transformation of public space, a metamorphic process, without relying on a hypothetical time in the future when everything will be perfect. The mistake of planners and architects is to believe that fifty years from now Alexanderplatz will be perfected. -p.197

— Daniel Libeskind