The man who lost control of Ground Zero

‘Unmöglich! Unmöglich!’ or as we would say — impossible. It cannot be built. It won’t stand up. The initial reaction to Daniel Libeskind’s plans for the Jewish Museum, Berlin, completed (adhering faithfully to those plans) in 2001, might have been more apposite in quattrocento Florence given their somewhat hysterical, God-fearing nature. But one soon becomes accustomed to such firebrand emotion. Here is an architect who wears his heart on his sleeve. Everybody has an opinion on his work.

For years, I have fought the ennui brought about by reviewing scores of dry architectural tomes and treatises for my ‘Architecture in Brief’ column in the Times Literary Supplement. I only wish someone like Daniel Libeskind would come along rather more often. Never have I come across such a lively, totally original, and provocative account of one man’s struggle at the cutting edge of architecture. This autobiographer’s prose style is as playfully inventive as his realised oeuvre.