This article was originally posted on DenverPost.com on April 13, 2003.
Critics laud renowned architect Daniel Libeskind for his visionary
aesthetic and keen intellect, but what sometimes gets overlooked is
his mastery of a skill not often associated with his field: good
old-fashioned salesmanship.
When trying to gain approval for his highly controversial,
spiraling extension to the venerable Victoria & Albert Museum in
London, he quickly realized whose thumbs-down would end any hope
for its realization: Prince Charles, England’s self-appointed
architectural gadfly.
So Libeskind shrewdly went to each of the prince’s six
architectural advisers and did his best to hawk the project. As a
result, he recounted with smiling self-satisfaction, three were for
it, three were against it, and as a result of the tie, Charles took
no position.
“I was just a few days ago in London, and the project was
introduced by Tessa Jowell, the minister of culture, and many
eminent people. It’s going to be built, but it’s a civic project,
and they take a lot of time,” said the 56-year-old Polish
immigrant architect.
Libeskind spent two days in Denver last week for a series of
activities surrounding the site dedication of the Denver Art
Museum’s planned $90.5 million addition just to the south of its
present building across 13th Avenue.
The former academician first learned of the importance of
salesmanship during the 12 years he spent negotiating a
half-century of charged history and sensitive issues in realizing
the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which opened in September 2001.
He gained further experience during the eight months he took part
in public forums and met with the selection committee, before his
selection in August 2000 as the design architect for the Denver Art
Museum’s expansion.
And his salesmanship reached its zenith when, as one of the seven
worldwide teams competing to become lead designer for the
reconstruction of the World Trade Center site, he had to literally
convince the world that his was the best plan.
“Sales is the right word,” Libeskind said, “because we live in
the marketplace, not only in terms of selling and buying but in the
marketplace of ideas. It’s a democratic city, democratic country,
and that’s how civic projects get developed.
“They’re certainly not going to be done in an ivory tower
somewhere – take it or leave it. Either you interact and
communicate what you’re doing or you’re really cynical and should
not be involved in civic art.”
Voice of the public
Indeed, the biggest change in today’s architecture might be a
renewed focus on the needs and desires of the many different people
who would use or somehow be affected by the project being
designed.
“The public is demanding that,” he said. “It’s not just that
architects suddenly decided that. The architects are beginning to
respond to a renaissance of public interest in their cities.
“People are no longer just taking these developments for granted.
They are saying: Why are they like that? And we want something
better, and we care about the environment.”
In that spirit, Libeskind believes that his proposal for the World
Trade Center site was ultimately chosen because it most
expressively delivered what he called a “ray of connection” to
everyone who was directly or indirectly touched by the tragedy
there.
One of the most prominent elements of his design is a memorial
“park of heroes,” a 4.7-acre open area 30 feet below street
level. It will leave visible some 300 feet of one of the site’s raw
foundation walls.
“I don’t think anyone has ever been on almost five acres in the
midst of lower Manhattan 30 feet below the action of the streets,”
Libeskind said. “It’s unprecedented, very spectacular, very
special, and it has a spiritual, sacred character being there.”
Also included will be a series of buildings culminating with a
1,776-foot-tall tower, which would contain 65 floors of office
space, an observation deck and restaurant on the 110th floor and a
television antenna that will make it the world’s tallest
structure.
Given New York’s bureaucratic maze and complicated politics, some
skeptics have questioned how much of Libeskind’s original design
will ever come to fruition. But the architect said he remains
steadfastly optimistic.
“I don’t consider compromise something evil or something bad,” he
said. “Again, the civic art, what does it involve? It involves
negotiating various paths and yet keeping to that straight line
that delivers the project with a vision and with integrity.”
Commitment to Denver Although Libeskind can’t say for sure how long the World Trade
Center reconstruction will take, he is eager to get at least some
portions of the project, such as the memorial and tower, built
within four or five years.
However soon that undertaking gets underway, he reaffirmed his
commitment to properly seeing the Denver Art Museum’s 146,000- square-foot expansion through from the excavation in June to its
scheduled 2006 completion.
With his recent move from Berlin to New York City because of the
World Trade Center commission, he now has a much shorter plane ride
to Denver, and he pledged to make regular visits to the project as
construction proceeds.
“I can assure the public,” he said, “that I’m as interested as
they are in making sure this a great building and that it works in
every way that everyone expects it to work.”
He said the museum, which is slated to become his first project
completed in North America, holds a key place among his designs at
the same time that it offers a sharp contrast to the somber Jewish
Museum, the most famous of his projects completed so far.
“In Europe,” he said, “I had to deal with European history, with
memory and with all sorts of topics that had a shadow over them. In
Denver, I’m involved in a project that’s totally outstanding in its
positivity and the fact that it’s about exuberance.
“And it’s about the beauty of the place, and it’s about the
optimism and the lights in the eyes of the future. In that sense,
it’s a central project, because it celebrates life. It speaks to
all that it is good, and I think it’s quintessentially an American
project.”
Distinct yet complementary
One of the many challenges for Libeskind was creating a building
that had its own identity yet somehow fit in and even complemented
the powerful, distinctive styles of its two major neighbors: the
existing 1971 museum building by Gio Ponti and 1995 Denver Central
Library by Michael Graves.
“They’re all relatively contemporary buildings,” Libeskind said,
“yet they represent their own histories.”
“The Ponti with its European connections and Michael Graves with
postmodernism, and even the Colorado Historical Society is a very,
very interesting building of its time.
“So, it’s a kind of unprecedented campus of new history, and, of
course, I attempted on every level to contribute to it, because
you’re going to enjoy all of these buildings and the landscapes
together.”
The rooms inside the addition on what is now the southwest corner
of 13th Avenue and Acoma Street will be reflected in the exterior
of the structure, which will look like anything but a typical,
boxlike building.
The tradition-defying, high-tech structure will consist of opposing
and overlapping angles and planes jutting forcefully upward. A
central, skylit atrium, with a kind of angular cone shape, will
grow in diameter as it rises 118 feet from floor to ceiling.
“One is always aware,” Libeskind said, “of the costs and the
struggles to a make a building that pushes the boundaries and not
just conceptually or just for the sake of aesthetics but actually
for the sake of visitor experience, that feeling in the stomach
that people will have, I know it, that kind of dizziness when they
confront that lobby.
“That’s part of it. That’s what I feel when I go to the Rocky
Mountains. That’s the same experience, and I wanted that to be part
of the beauty of the building.”
Birth of a building
This is a timeline of the Denver Art Museum expansion project:
1998: The idea of an expansion becomes public.
January-April 1999: Parameters of an addition are outlined with the
help of Klipp Colussy Jenks Dubois Architects.
August 1999: Mayor Wellington E. Webb and the City Council endorse
a $62.5 million bond issue for the project.
November 1999: Denver voters approve the bond issue.
January 2000: A selection committee is appointed to review the pool
of 40 architectural candidates.
April 2000: The committee narrows the list of architects to five.
May 2000: The five finalists are winnowed to three: Arata Isozaki,
Daniel Libeskind and Thom Mayne.
July 2000: Daniel Libeskind is selected as design architect.
August 2000: Libeskind chooses Davis Partnership as his local
collaborator.
December 2000: The first model is unveiled at a public forum.
January 2001: Design work begins in earnest.
July 2001: Mortenson is named as the contractor.
November 2001: The museum announces it has raised $50 million for
an endowment to fund the addition’s operations and maintenance.
April 2002: Ground is broken for the parking garage.
March 2003: The garage opens.
April 2003: The addition is named in honor of Frederic C. Hamilton
at a site dedication and the cost increases to $90.5 million.
June 2003: Excavation is set to begin.
Spring 2006 (tentative): Construction will be completed.
Fall 2006 (tentative): The addition will open to the public.
Breakdown
Here are some facts about the Denver Art Museum and its planned
addition:
Original building
Opening: 1971
Architects: Gio Ponti and James Sudler Associates
Cost: $6.5 million
Square footage: 210,000
Height: 120 feet
Addition Opening: 2006
Cost: $90.5 million
Architects: Daniel Libeskind and Davis Partnership
Square footage: 146,000
Height: 120 feet
