Precedent Study - The Jewish Museum

Precedent Focus - Atmosphere Through Control of Natural Light

Architect - Daniel Libeskind

Location - Berlin, Germany

The Jewish Museum Berlin, exhibits the social, political and cultural history of the Jews in Germany from the fourth century to the present, explicitly presenting and integrating, for the first time in postwar Germany, the repercussions of the Holocaust.

The visitor enters the Baroque Kollegienhaus and then descends by stairway through the dramatic Entry Void, into the underground, thus preserving the contradictory autonomy of both the old and new structures on the surface. The descent leads to three underground axial routes, each of which tells a different story.

This precedent study serves to identify successful elements of Libeskind’s architecture pertaining to the generation of sombre and holistic atmospheres.

The building zigzags with its titanium-zinc façade and features underground axes, angled walls, and bare concrete “voids” without heat or air-conditioning. With his “Between the Lines” design, Daniel Libeskind did not want simply to design a museum building, but to recount German-Jewish history. Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) installation by Menashe Kadishman. More than 10,000 faces with open mouths, cut from heavy round iron plates, cover the floor of the ground floor void.

Interior Perspectives

Daniel Libeskind designed the structure of the windows based on the addresses of notable Jewish and non-Jewish Berlin figures. The most notable intervention exhibited in the museum to control natural light is the use of windows. As a response to this precedent study, I have incorporated the windows from the museum into an existing facade on Parker Drive. The intention behind this was to begin forming the relationships between old and new, and to test facade treatments that would generate a response or atmosphere akin to this precedent. This intervention was unsuccessful as the facade lost its character, and became novelty which took away from my initial design intentions. However, this adds to the iterative development of the overall scheme and has brought me one step closer to achieving the most suitable facade treatment.