If Mary McCarthy, deputy director of Cork 2005, has a cap, she now also has a big bright feather to put in it, after the resounding success of Daniel Libeskind's brief visit to the city.
It's not often, of course, that an architect can produce a built example of his work more or less out of his briefcase, but this is what Libeskind (to whose embracing creativity little is barred) did last weekend with the opening of his "18 Turns" pavilion at Fota.
This was followed within hours by his sell-out lecture at the Opera House, packed with so many planners, architects, developers, builders and designers that one would imagine that the built environment in Cork, and Ireland, must be in a far less sorry state than it is. Even getting to the elongated planes and angles of his pavilion brings a skyline pierced with cranes as a new golf course, hotel and clusters of housing are being built around the old estate. As Libeskind spoke of opening up the panoramic views from his Imperial War Museum North design for Manchester, there can't have been a soul in the audience unaware that in Cork the preference is to annihilate panoramas wherever possible.
In an event reverberating with insights, experience and philosophy, Libeskind's origins and influence were set in a generous context by Irish architect Seán Ó Laoire, whose welcoming words were endorsed by Paul McNieve, MD of main sponsors Hamilton Osborne King. Speaking rapidly to a series of projections of recent commissions (Denver, Milan and Dublin), Libeskind explained his use of light, gravity and textiles to create relationships and atmosphere while briefly sketching his imaginative approach to issues of meaning, function and economics - the reunited shards of a shattered globe, for example, meeting for the war museum.
Despite the importance of other skills within the building trade, architecture, he said, "is much closer to the profession of story-telling than to plumbing. It's a communicative art: every building tells a story." But it is also a communal one, and his description of his response to the commission for Manhattan's Ground Zero site was intensely moving without being in the least self-indulgent. "This was a project which made me think a lot about the world. I decided that September 11th was the first real attack against global democracy," he said.
As the screen showed the image of his Freedom Tower soaring to match the lamp held aloft by the Statue of Liberty across the water, this Jewish immigrant from Poland who arrived in New York harbour at the age of 14 spoke of finding, at Ground Zero, the sluice wall, the twin towers foundation which was never meant to be seen. This, for Libeskind, became a metaphor for tragedy and resilience and a focal point of his "Memory Foundation" design. "History", he said when questioned later, "is not a story that has a good ending or a bad ending; it depends on what we do."
