Daniel Libeskind Glass Courtyard
Daniel Libeskind has designed a structure to cover the courtyard of the original 18th-century Jewish Museum adjacent to his 1999 extension in Berlin. The , which opened in September, is a 12m-high, freestanding steel structure with a glazed roof and curtain walls.
The contorted bundles of white columns and beams contain electrical wiring, speaker systems and lighting for the multi-purpose space. A small stage area has been integrated into the existing steps leading onto the central door.
Although inspired by the huts used for gatherings in the Jewish festival of Sukkot – and occupying space in a building that was bombed in the Second World War and then rebuilt – the form doesn’t reference history in the manner of the neighbouring extension. “The design is firstly graphic, and then sculptural and structural,” says architect Matthias Reese of Reese Architekten, working partner in the project. “It deliberately does not relate or discuss. It’s about meetings, music, dinners and events. It has a different meaning quite separate from Jewish-German relations, addressed in the first extension.”
The design was intended to maintain the feeling of an outdoor space – the floor uses the same granite as most of the pavements in Berlin – and sliding doors along the lower front elevation open out to the gardens of the museum in summer.
“It’s interesting that, for perhaps the first time, Libeskind is dealing not with volume but with structure itself,” says Reese. words Beatrice Galilee via ICON
images Sönke Tollkühn
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