Abstract
The importance of Walter Benjamin s thinking to Daniel Libeskind's design process as he developed the Jewish Museum. Berlin, has been noted by a number of writers — not least Anthony Vidler and Naomi Stead — as well as the architect himself.1 Among the opening displays was a room dedicated to the philosopher of the city, who it as not only a great chronicler of Berlin itself, but perhaps the outstanding thinker of the modem city as such. Benjamin and Libeskind are connected above all by the latter's creative use of the concept now most associated with the former: the passage, or, more accurately, passaging as the form of modern being. But the two men are also connected at a deeper theoretical level. I will show in this paper that it was a set of Benjamin's core concepts that enabled Libeskind to find a solution, not only to the problem for architecture set by Adorno, but also that set by Heidegger. The philosophical and therefore architectural originality of the Jewish Museum. Berlin — as Andrew Benjamin has also recognized — lies here.2
Published Version
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