aniel Libeskind and his wife (and
business partner) Nina are waiting for a train
to Somerset under the four-sided clock at
London’s Waterloo station. It’s just past ten
in the morning on Friday the 13th (of July).
The fact that Donald Trump is in town is
adding to the date’s traditionally doomy
atmospherics. ‘Look at this,’ says Libeskind,
showing us a snap of the infamous Donald
baby blimp. ‘I think it’s brilliant. So funny.
That’s the kind of thing that will annoy him,
he’s so humourless.’
The track number appears on the
timetable; we shuffle aboard. But about an
hour into the journey the train is diverted:
there’s a cow on the rails, poor thing. We
arrive at our stop nearly four hours after
departure. There, a jazzy new Land Rover
whisks us down winding country roads, up
a small gravel path and deposits us in front
of a former barn, now a metal workshop.
Waiting in the centre of the lofty main
space, against a backdrop of heavy machinery
and the ripe smell of manure, is the thing
we’ve all come to see: a 350kg fusion of
bright white Carrara marble and bronze
gone brilliantly blue thanks to a chemical
treatment. A seat, a sculpture, a piece
of architecture, it is a hunky block of
quintessential Libeskind language: all hard
lines and imposing angles, yet somehow
more poetic than bombastic.
‘I’m very happy,’ says Libeskind, seeing the
completed piece for the first time, running
his hands across its planes. ‘It reads like the
model of a building: it generates context,
creates architecture rather than responds
to it.’ The train ride and unpresidential
distractions forgotten, he sits down and tries
out this now physical manifestation of his
imagination. ‘It’s actually really comfortable,’
he says, sounding almost surprised.
The chair will make its debut this
September as part of Libeskind’s first solo
exhibition with one of London’s most
established design destinations, the
David Gill Gallery in St James’s. ‘I wanted
Daniel to create something that he had
not done before, and something that he could
not do for anybody else,’ says Gill, who has
commissioned works from the likes of Donald
Judd, Zaha Hadid, and David Chipperfield
since opening his eponymous art and design
gallery in 1987. ‘What I love is the level of
complexity in each piece. Across structure,
material, and form, every piece is as nuanced
as a building,’ he continues. ‘Daniel’s
signature is his geometry; the juxtapositions
he creates. And just like in his buildings,
you cannot just digest these designs in one
second – they are fascinating, captivating,
but they require studying and contemplation
to be understood.’
Each design was developed from one of
Libeskind’s abstract drawings, always the
starting point for his architectural work of
any scale. ‘My drawings are like cartographies
of the mind: a map or tool that allows me to
take a voyage to places I would otherwise
never encounter,’ says Libeskind. He never
sits down to draw a specific thing, rather
letting intuition and imagination guide him
to a place unknown. The results are not
figurative in any obvious way, but they are
at their essence architectural, says Libeskind:
‘They are about space, about light, about
proportions. These are not sketches of
physical things, but drawings that lead to
the possibilities of an object.’
To follow Libeskind’s train of thought,
one must readjust and tune into a higher
frequency, one that exists somewhere beyond
slick architectural jargon and the built
environment as we know it. Libeskind-land
is about other, imagined worlds that revolve
around the harmonious fusion of science
and fantasy, intellect and artistry.
Before breaking ground on his first
building – a small museum in Osnabrück,
Germany, which was completed in 1998
when Libeskind was already in his fifties (he
is now 72) – Libeskind spent several decades
in academia. He was an architectural theorist
long before he was a practising architect;
perhaps one of the reasons why narrativeand meaning appear more essential to his (^) »
D
SHOW PIECES
As sketched for Wallpaper* by Libeskind,
the limited-editions set to feature in his
show at London’s David Gill Gallery
‘Bronze Megalith In Motion’
A sprawling, landscape-like
bronze coffee table
‘2X7 Table’
A fierce-looking console featuring
bands of sharp-edged stainless steel
‘Seraph In Motion’
A monumental, 5m-long glass and
stainless steel dining table
‘Skytrap Chair’
A futuristic stainless steel and
carbon fibre armchair
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