Illustration by FP
Daniel Libeskind is one of the world’s best-known architects, designer of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, the Denver Art Museum’s very forward-looking new addition, and the early master plan for the World Trade Center site. He works everywhere—or almost everywhere. A few years ago, he told me he would never work in China. Libeskind, who was born in Poland in 1946, lived for a time under the feckless regime of communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka. It wasn’t an experience that left him well disposed toward one-party states.
Libeskind’s scruples on the client question weren’t widely known until February, when he gave a talk in Belfast in which he criticized architects willing to offer their services to totalitarian regimes. “I think architects should take a more ethical stance,” he said. “It bothers me when an architect has carte blanche with a site . . . We don’t know if there was a public process—who owns this place, this home, this land?”
Why did Libeskind speak up now? Because the topic is becoming unavoidable. For years, the biggest names in architecture have been flocking to countries where democratic procedures are a rare phenomenon. The world’s largest and most daring construction...
