Daniel Libeskind, an architect who has worked on Jewish Museums and Holocaust Memorials throughout the world, is well known here for his design for the new World Trade Center Freedom Tower. 

This lovely article in the Deutsche Morgenpost from March 1st, 2016 interviews Libeskind about his favorite building. Libeskind designed the new building for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which the article calls “one of the greatest and most moving buildings of the 21st century. “

Here are a few notes from the article (Google translated, with my adjustments). I recommend reading it in its entirety, whether in the original German or in translation.

Libeskind names Erich Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower, in Wissenschaftspark Potsdam, as his favorite building.

Libeskind was born in 1946 in Lodz, Poland, and emigrated to New York in 1959 (after a stopover in Israel). He is the son of two Holocaust survivors.

Mendelsohn, a Jew, also emigrated to the USA (after a stopover in England). He loved music, especially Bach. Mendelsohn married cellist Luise Maas, through which he met the astrophysicist Erwin Freundlich, through whom he got the contract for the tower. 

Libeskind was a gifted accordionist in his youth; his son is an astrophysicist. The story is full of similarities of this sort!

Of his interest in accordion, the article continues: “Although his mother convinced him that architecture is art brought down to earth, he was still a musician, says Libeskind. He just no longer plays accordion. “My instrument is architecture. In architecture, it’s about creating an atmosphere, balancing harmonies and dissonances. Architecture is a musical art.” 

Libeskind is planning a musical project with the Alte Oper in Frankfurt for 2016. For 24 hours a day there will be music in places form skyscrapers to the pedestrian underpass.