Daniel Libeskind was born to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland, in 1946. As a teenager his family travelled to New York, USA, where Libeskind began to pursue studies in architecture, and he later moved to study for a postgraduate degree in the History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Essex, England. After winning a competition to design the planned Jewish Museum in Berlin in 1989, Libeskind began practically applying his architectural skills, and has been commissioned to build many important buildings in the UK and worldwide.
Architect Daniel Libeskind was born to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland, in 1946, just after the end of the Second World War. His mother was originally from Warsaw while his father was from Łódź and they survived the Holocaust by escaping to Russia in 1939, following the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. Captured in Russia soon after arriving, they were sent to labour camps in Siberia and following their release in 1942, had walked south to Kyrgyzstan before deciding to return to Poland after the Nazi defeat in 1945. Most of their immediate relatives in Poland had been murdered.
The family moved together to Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1957, where they remained for two years before immigrating to New York, USA, in 1959, when Liebeskind was thirteen. A creative and musical child, he learned to play the accordion and expressed an interest in becoming an artist, although was steered towards architecture by his family, who were concerned he would not be able to make a living from art. Originally gaining his Bachelor degree in Architecture from New York’s Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Libeskind then moved to pursue a postgraduate degree in the History and Theory of Architecture from the University of Essex, England, and graduated in 1972. He later spent time living in north London, close to the Holloway Road. Following his postgraduate studies in the UK, Libeskind became an academic and lecturer, and was made Head of Architecture at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA, from 1975-85.
His career as an architect began in earnest when, in 1989, the year he founded Studio Libeskind with his wife, Nina, his architectural design was selected in a competition for the design of Berlin’s planned Jewish Museum, the first practical application of one of his building designs. He was just one of twelve non-German architects accepted for entry into the competition. It took an additional ten years before the building was completed, and the opening of the museum occurred just two days before the attacks in New York on 11 September 2001. An incredibly striking building design, Libeskind intended to express the history of the Jewish people through the architecture, featuring a powerful, suffocating dark ‘void’ to express the loss of Jewish culture through the Holocaust. However, his first finished building design was actually an extension to the Cultural History Museum Osnabrück in Germany in 1998, with a section dedicated to German-Jewish artist Felix Nussbaum, who had died in Auschwitz. Quickly gaining global popularity and fame, in 2003 Libeskind won a competition to redesign the space of 'Ground Zero' of the New York 9/11 attacks, where the World Trade Centre buildings had stood previously.
Although he has not returned to settle permanently in the UK, Libeskind has spent extensive periods of time working here on various important architectural projects, and designing and building a number of sites. These includes the Imperial War Museum North in Salford, with his design intending to express the earth-shattering effect of conflict on the people who experience it. Although he won a competition in 1996 to design an extension to London’s Victoria and Albert museum, the project was never realised. In 2003, the same year he began the World Trade Centre redesign, Libeskind was commissioned to redesign the Graduate Centre for London Metropolitan University on the Holloway Road in London. Discussing his design at the time and his fondness for an understanding of the area, Libeskind said: ‘London is kind of a home away from home, […] I already knew Holloway Road as a very tough road. Very grim buildings in a brutalist style from a brutalist time. They really needed something contemporary and attractive. It's not only the exterior, though, internally it's also going to be very spectacular.’ (Libeskind, quoted in Rose, 2003). Libeskind designed a centre for cancer care, Maggie’s Centre, as an extension to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, which opened to the public in 2024. In recognition of his extraordinary innovations in the field of architecture and how it can be used to capture and express memory within a culture and society, Libeskind was made an honorary Royal Academician at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2003. A number of exhibitions covering his contribution to the field of architecture have been held worldwide, and he continues to work on various architectural design projects. He currently lives and works out of New York, USA. His works are not held in public collections in the UK, but his contributions to British architecture are visible in many key locations nationwide.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Daniel Libeskind]
Publications related to [Daniel Libeskind] in the Ben Uri Library