An Intimate Look At Daniel Libeskind’s Creative Process

Architizer News

An Intimate Look At Daniel Libeskind’s Creative Process

February 27, 2013

Sketch for Jewish Museum, Berlin

World-famous architect, artist, and set designer Daniel Libeskind produces work that engages the memories and emotions of the public. This force also shines through in his drawings–free-form, elaborate, textural artworks that hypnotically draw the eye into a maze of shades and angles. Hardly resembling architectural sketches, these blueprints offer a peek into his painstakingly intense visioning process.

An ample collection of these stunning drawings will be on view for the first time in Rome. Opening March 11 at the Ermanno Tedeschi gallery, “Never Say the Eye Is Rigid: Architectural Drawings of Daniel Libeskind” features 52 original drawings. The show will then travel to Milan, Turin, Tel Aviv, and New York. Read more!

Sketch for Fiera Milano Museum, Milan

Passionate about sketching since childhood, Libeskind highlighted the centrality of drawing to his creative process in his 2004 memoir, Breaking Ground: Adventures in Life and Architecture. “[T]he physical act of drawing with one’s hand is an important part of the architectural process,” he wrote. “An architect needs to know how to draw; unless there is a connection of eye, hand, and mind, the drawing of the building will lose the human soul altogether and become an abstract exercise. I also believe that it’s only when they are drawing that architects have those Proustian moments—those instants in which they accidentally trip against the uneven stones of mind, triggering memories that magically unlock sorts of visions that underlie all great art.”

Sketches for World’s Trade Center and Zlota 44

The artwork at Ermanno Tedeschi illustrates eight of the architect’s projects in Germany, Italy, Poland, the UK, and the US, including the Jewish Museum Berlin (2001), Memory Foundations at Ground Zero (2003), the master plan for the World Trade Center site, and many more. Demonstrating an ease with a variety of styles and techniques, the drawings range from line drawings to watercolors to free-flowing ink sketches, while keeping the tension that is characteristic of the architect’s style.