Whether designing Dublin's docklands or creating the new World Trade Center, Daniel Libeskind lives up to his title of 'starchitect', writes Sean O'Driscoll
Daniel Libeskind hands his briefcase to his driver, almost without looking, and continues flapping his arms wildly. He is so animated about his plans for lower Manhattan that words fuse together and, replaying it later, it's difficult to make out where one sentence ends and where the next starts.
As we walk down Lexington Avenue, I can see heads turning. A tiny figure in iconic black rectangular glasses and cowboy boots, he is a New York superstar, almost an American stereotype of the European intellectual.
People stop on the corner of 51st to stare at him. "With the glasses," says one woman as she points. The media has propelled his public image, as much for his bitter fights with World Trade Center owner Larry Silverstein and other architects as for the Freedom Tower itself. "Hoopla and fireworks," he says of his much publicised flare ups with Silverstein, but freely admits to tensions between them. "Well of course! He is a typical developer. His idea is to make maximum profit. That's the truth!" he exclaims, punching the air for effect.
The tension began almost immediately after Libeskind was appointed master planner for the site and the shouting matches have been ongoing. For example, Libeskind wants the new Freedom Tower to be exactly 1776ft tall to commemorate the American War of Independence (one foot for every year between Jesus Christ and George Washington) whereas Silverstein was very eager to regain the office space he lost on 9/11.
"It is the classic story between art and commerce," says Libeskind. Back at the Foreign Press Center in mid-Manhattan, Libeskind insists that the worst is over and that he no longer has to deal directly with Silverstein. "My dealings with him are very limited now because the Port Authority has taken over the responsibility for the construction of the Freedom Tower," he says, swigging from a bottle of mineral water.
And then he pays Silverstein a sly complement about the first new building at Ground Zero. "He built a nice building at number seven World Trade Center. Very standard of course . . . but it was well executed." He laughs at his own words, realising that his compliment sounds a little strained.
HE IS IN good mood - in a redesign praised by the New York Times and fellow architects, he has beaten back government securocrats and unveiled a new Freedom Tower that will be less of an oppressive fortress with fewer security barriers and fortified walls at the base. The tower will also include safety glass that will break into millions of tiny pebbles if smashed open by a terrorist bomb, avoiding the huge chunks of falling sheet glass that killed so many on 9/11. He has also preserved a crucial part of his design by keeping part of the World Trade Center foundations visible, including the old basin wall that keeps the site from flooding.
"You will be able to see the full height of that incredible foundation including the slurry wall on the western side of the foundation, which the public can access from underground."
In language so beloved of city planners around the world, Libeskind describes the picturesque sounding slurry wall as "a living wall".
"It's not a wall that is like a ruin. It's the wall that is supporting the site and is the dam between the Hudson and lower Manhattan. So it will be something very special because the wall freezes in the winter, it gets moist in the summer. It's a living memorial."
He is also confident that he can play out all the bureaucrats in his way and realise his vision for the world's most famous building site. "Look," he says, with a certain air of triumph. "The governors, the mayors, the architects, the investors; they will be long gone when I am still in my role as master planner of Ground Zero!"
THERE ARE RUMOURS that he still refuses to talk to some of the other architects and that all communication goes through intermediaries. "No!" he insists. "It's certainly not an easy task. It can be really difficult but I talk to everyone. The truth is that I'm one of the few people who actually does talk to everybody!"
He was been criticised for winging this project, but changing designs are an inevitable consequence, he says, of dealing with so many conflicting interests. One of the most serious charges, driven by architect Eli Attia's paper, The Nine Lies of Daniel Libeskind, is that his "Wedge of Light" is physically impossible. The Wedge, an alignment of the 9/11 memorial so that no shadow would cast over it on the morning of September 11th, was criticised as completely unworkable.
However, Libeskind insists that the elements he had fought for the hardest will remain, including that there will be "no shadow cast on the memorial". His natural charm and ability to side step issues makes it difficult to pin down on some points.
He has not read Pseuds' Corner in Private Eye magazine, where he and other architects make occasional appearances for their outrageously verbose language about "spatial cognitions" and "multi-platform dimensions". He turns mention of pretentious language into just another opportunity for proselytising. "Most of the architects talk to themselves or to developers. They have to learn to talk to the public as well to show the work as a civic art," he insists, unflinchingly.
No matter what the language, or his fights with other architects, his free-flowing designs have proven publicly popular around the world. His design for Carlisle Pier in Dún Laoghaire was voted best by the general public, but the project was eventually awarded to another team.
"I remember that one very well, but that is really classical - the struggle between developers, money, power, other architects, civil ideas of social spaces. That's constant in architecture. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not. At the pier, we were unlucky," he says.
He is delighted that his designs for Dublin's docklands are moving ahead, and is especially happy with the new performing arts centre. I put some of the criticism of both the IFSC and the docklands designs to him - that Dublin's docks are becoming too like any other financial services town, a sterile environment of gated communities, coffee shops and corporate art that lacks interaction with the outside city. Will his beloved arts centre really give life to the docklands or just add to its gentrification?
He doesn't miss a beat.
"Oh, it's not just another big box," he says. "What I've attempted to do it create a transparency so even people who are not involved in the art of performance can enjoy gardens and restaurants which extend the public space of the plaza and of the docklands." The docklands will not become just another bland living space for officer workers, he insists, and the arts centre will be crucial in keeping a community. "I certainly think that in this form, this unprecedented iconic figure will be a contribution to the variety and diversity of the docklands. It will bring something other than just more of the same," he insists, cutting through the air with his hand for effect.
HIS FAMILY ARE Polish Ashkenazi Jews. I am curious what he thinks of a recent cover story in New York magazine which cites a theory in the Journal of Biosocial Science that Ashkenazi Jews, while prone to some illnesses, also carry genes for extraordinary intelligence. He throws his head back and screams out a laugh.
"I didn't read it but I don't believe it!" he says with another huge laugh. "If you knew some of the people I knew!
"Did you hear that?" he says to his publicist, Lloyd Kaplan, who sits in the corner of the room, quietly taking notes.
"Yes," says Kaplan, also laughing. "That's new!" Born just after the war, Libeskind's family fled the bleakness of 1950s Poland, many of their close relatives murdered by the Nazis. Later, his wife Nina tells me that their eldest son is working as a translator in New York to help families sue Swiss Union bank for the bank's alleged involvement in Nazi plundering of Jewish assets.
For Daniel, America was an "unexpected saviour". He arrived by ship into New York harbour in 1959, the sight of the Manhattan skyline beginning his lifelong fascination with downtown Manhattan. "My commitment to Ground Zero is based to a large extent on that idea of arriving by ship," he says. The memory is still very vivid.
"My mother woke us at 4.30 in the morning and said you are going to see New York. We all huddled, just like in the movies, in the front of the ship. And truly, out of the mist, on August 28th, came the Statue of Liberty. I was 11 or 12 years old and I thought it was the largest thing I had ever seen in my life. And then right behind it was skyline. There is nothing to prepare you for the density and magic of Manhattan."
As an architecture student, he recalls seeing the "flat, derelict site" where the World Trade Center was later built and now realises he has a "huge, huge incredible" opportunity to reinvent history.
"People can say what they want, there will be all these arguments among the developers, the families, the architects but whatever I do here will hopefully remain for centuries," he says, suddenly rigid in his seat. "I will get it right, because I simply have to. I owe it to everyone who first saw New York from the deck of a ship."