About Our Speaker

Daniel Libeskind
B.Arch. M.A. BDA AIA

Daniel Libeskind is an international figure in architecture and urban design. He is renowned for his ability to evoke cultural memory in buildings. Informed by a deep commitment to music, philosophy, literature and poetry, Libeskind aims to create architecture that is resonant, unique and sustainable.

Born in Lodz, Poland in 1946 to Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors, Libeskind learned to play the accordion as a young child and quickly became a virtuoso. The family moved to Kibbutz Gvat, Israel in 1957, and then in 1959, he won a prestigious America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship to play alongside a young Itzhak Perlman. Soon after, his family immigrated to the U.S. and settled in the Bronx.

He eventually left music to study architecture and received his professional degree in architecture from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1970 and a postgraduate degree in the history and theory of architecture from the School of Comparative Studies at Essex University in England in 1972.

In 1989, Libeskind won the international competition to build the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

A series of influential museum commissions followed, including the Felix Nussbaum Haus, Osnabrück; Imperial War Museum North, Manchester; Denver Art Museum; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; Danish Jewish Museum; Royal Ontario Museum; and the Military History Museum, Dresden.

In 2003, Studio Libeskind won another historic competition – to create a master plan for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. In addition to a towering spire of 1,776 feet, the Libeskind design study proposed a complex program encompassing a memorial, underground museum, the integration of the slurry wall, special transit hub and four office towers.

Libeskind speaks widely on the art of architecture in universities and professional summits. His architecture and ideas have been the subject of many articles and exhibitions, influencing the field of architecture and the development of cities and culture. His autobiography, Breaking Ground: An Immigrant’s Journey from Poland to Ground Zero, was published in 2004.

Daniel Libeskind is both a U.S. and Israeli citizen, and lives in New York with his wife and business partner, Nina Libeskind. They have three children: Lev, Noam and Rachel.