Designed in the second half of the 90s, the Jewish Museum in Berlin opened in September 2011.The modern architectural elements of the Libeskind building comprise the zinc façade, (described as “An irrational and invisible matrix”), the Garden of Exile (which attempts “to completely disorient the visitor [and] represents a shipwreck of history”), the three Axes of the German-Jewish experience, and the Voids (which refer to “that which can never be exhibited when it comes to Jewish Berlin history: Humanity reduced to ashes”).Together these pieces form a visual and spatial language rich with history and symbolism. In the words of the architect: “The official name of the project is ‘Jewish Museum’ but I have named it ‘Between the Lines’ because for me it is about two lines of thinking, organization, and relationship. One is a straight line, but broken into many fragments, the other is a tortuous line, but continuing indefinitely.” In some way, Libeskind imagines the continuation of both lines throughout the city of Berlin and beyond.

Scarcely any other contemporary building has been the focus of so much attention and heated discussion as the Jewish Museum in Berlin. This guide to the museum's architecture sheds light on its symbolism as well as on the philosophy behind it. The historic and social significance of this museum extends far beyond the bounds of the city. Its already famous zigzag structure challenges the very way we regard architecture.

"Published in conjunction with the opening of the Contemporary Jewish Museum building on June 8, 2008"--T.p. verso.

A stunning tour of the work of internationally known architect Daniel Libeskind and an investigation of a master artist's creative process. Daniel Libeskind is one of the foremost architects of our time, a self-proclaimed rebel celebrated for innovative, site-conscious designs, including the Jewish Museum Berlin and New York's World Trade Center Redevelopment. He has also emerged as one of architecture's most visible public ambassadors. In Edge of Order, Libeskind opens the door to his unique creative process, guiding us through a selection of his projects never before collected--both built and unrealized, major commissions and unexpected favorites--and revealing how he arrived at their designs through text and a rich array of visuals, including drawings, plans, and photographs. With a voracious appetite for culture and history, and an encyclopedic memory, Libeskind draws on everything from Greek mythology to Emily Dickinson to the Marx Brothers to explain the way he thinks about buildings and cities. Far more than a monograph, Edge of Order is both an essential document of Libeskind's remarkable career and an intimate portrait of an artist that will encourage creative people in any field to discover new points of inspiration.

Author Paul Goldberger, of international renown, documents all of Libeskind‘s high-profile projects such as the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Highly attractive object with exclusive graphic design.

This book is a detailed critical study of Libeskind’s Berlin Jewish Museum in its historical, architectural and philosophical context. Emphasizing how the Holocaust changed our perception of history, memory, witnessing and representation, it develops the notion of ‘memorial ethics’ to explore the Museum’s difference from more conventional post-World War Two commemorative sites. The main focus is on the Museum as an experience of the materiality of trauma which engages the visitor in a performative duty to remember. Arleen Ionescu builds on Levinas’s idea of ‘ethics as optics’ to show how Libeskind’s Museum becomes a testimony to the unpresentable Other. Ionescu also extends the Museum’s experiential dimension by proposing her own subjective walk through Libeskind’s space reimagined as a ‘literary museum’. Featuring reflections on texts by Beckett, Celan, Derrida, Kafka, Blanchot, Wiesel and Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger (Celan’s cousin), this virtual tour concludes with a brief account of Libeskind’s analogous ‘healing project’ for Ground Zero.