This article was originally posted on DenverPost.com on February 28, 2003.
New York – When Daniel Libeskind entered the design competition for
the Denver Art Museum’s $62.5 million addition in 2000, he had
completed just a few buildings and was hardly known to the American
public.
Little did he suspect that the selection process he went through
that year would become a kind of trial run for his involvement in a
similar though significantly more complex effort to select the
architect for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site.
Libeskind convincingly won the competition in Denver, and Thursday
morning it was formally announced that he had done the same in New
York City, beating out eight other proposals from some of the
world’s top firms for the World Trade Center project.
Although the stakes in New York are much higher and the number of
stakeholders considerably greater, Libeskind’s essential approach
was largely the same as it was in Denver: talking to people,
articulating his message and building a consensus.
“He was one of the five top architects who were narrowed to
three,” Denver architect David Owen Tryba said about the Denver
process, “and he engaged this community and the selection
committee in a rigorous public debate about what the museum should
be. And I think it was kind of a preamble and warm-up for him.”
The Berlin-based designer’s latest victory has thrust him front and
center in the architectural world, garnered him unprecedented
international attention and inevitably heightened the visibility of
his other undertakings at the same time.
Among them, of course, is the Denver Art Museum addition, which
will be Libeskind’s first building completed in North America. A
groundbreaking ceremony is set for April, and construction is
scheduled to conclude in 2006.
“Denver hired Libeskind when he was not such big stuff,” said
Paul Goldberger, architectural critic for the New Yorker. “And
suddenly now he is among the small handful of the most prominent
architects in the world.
“I suspect that if a museum project the size of Denver came to
Libeskind today, he would say, ‘No, thank you.’ So, you were lucky
that you got in before it was too late for a project of that
size.”
The question for many in Denver is whether Libeskind’s newfound
notoriety will be a civic boon. Eugene Dilbeck, president of the
Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau, expects his
organization to try to do everything possible to capitalize on
Libeskind’s name.
“I think Denver will benefit from the fact that he has been chosen
as the designer,” he said. “It gives us great marketing
capability around his presence.”
He added, “It’s all subjective, but it’s a hook, and we’re all
looking for hooks in this world to try and be able to communicate
what it is you want to get out about your city.”
The other question is whether Libeskind will turn his back on
Denver now that the WTC project has become the center of his life
for at least the next 10 years and most of his firm’s design work
in Denver is done.
But Nina Libeskind, the architect’s wife and business partner, said
Denver need not worry. The city has had and always will have an
important place in their hearts and souls.
“Not only are we not going to forget you,” she said Thursday,
“we’re moving to New York, I hope in the next three or four
months, and it’s a mere three hours to Denver. It’s a lot easier to
get there. Denver has been so supportive of Daniel and the
community has been so wonderful that it will be fun to be
closer.”
Besides similarities in the processes that led to Libeskind’s
selection in both cities, there also are parallels between the
design challenges he faced in both cases of bringing together many
competing components.
In Denver, his addition not only had to speak to the museum’s
existing building by Gio Ponti and a neighboring library designed
by Michael Graves, but it also had to relate to Civic Center, the
Golden Triangle and the rest of the adjacent city.
In New York, the number of elements involved is even greater
because Libeskind’s design has to recall the devastating WTC
tragedy at the same time it tries to bring the district back to
life.
But again, his approach was similar enough to what he did in Denver
that he even used a term during his presentation Thursday that he
has applied to the art museum, calling his plan for the WTC site a
“cultural nexus.”
