A Critical View: Libeskind in London
Located in Holloway Road, north London, one of the busiest arterial routes in the city, the new Postgraduate Centre of the Metropolitan University required an iconic structure that would lend it a distinct identity in its desolate surroundings. Daniel Libeskind, the architect, has created a strikingly expressive sculpture consisting of “three intersecting shards”. The building resembles a piece of art in the public realm or a fortress encased in stainless-steel rather than a place of education. Fascinating though it is externally, the centre raises a number of questions. Hitherto, the “master of tragic memorials”, as the British press once called Libeskind, has designed forms symbolic of catastrophe and tragedy. For the Jewish Museum in Berlin, he used the image of the Star of David shattered by a stroke of lightning. For the Imperial War Museum in Manchester (2002), he opted for a similar aesthetic solution, taking the exploding globe as his model. In London, the form alone suffices. Libeskind claims to have chosen the constellation of Orion as his point of reference. His somewhat contrived argumentation, however, places him in the ranks of those architects who are intent on selling a brand image rather than a meaningful idea or individual solutions.
