in history, a hole that swallows up all rhetoric of progress, but which is invisible to
the naked eye. This invisibility is transformed here into an experience that is incom-
prehensible and yet ineluctable. The visitor will be subjected physically to the con-
frontation through a series of spatial experiences that can leave few people
unmoved: the entrance via the old building and the underground passages; the slop-
ing basement with its complex axes; the endless stair to the upper floors; the sense
of disorientation induced by the zigzag shape; the repeated crossing of the voids.
These insistent experiences are reminiscent of the unthinkable events that are in-
terwoven into the identity of our present culture.
Libeskind is not exactly informative with regard to the fourth theme, that of
Benjamin’s Einbahnstrasse. The clues that he gives permit us to draw a connection
between the Star of David with its sixpoints, Schoenberg’s opera that was com-
posed using the twelvetone system, and Benjamin’s book that consists of sixty
parts. These different reference points reinforce each other; their effect is to mark
out crucial spots in the museum as points where a number of energy lines condense,
as it were, in points of convergence that are charged with meaning—the end of
the main stair, for instance, or certain
points in the basement.
In a commentary on Libes-
kind’s project, Derrida has drawn at-
tention to the question of whether
the materialization of this design does
not detract from the multiple, unde-
cidable character that is so typical of
Libeskind’s earlier drawings and ma-
quettes. A void that is given palpable
and visible form in a building is in a
certain sense less empty than one’s
mental picture of a void (figure 94).
Derrida points out that Libeskind’s
void is full of history, of meaning, and
of experience and that it is therefore
distinct from a completely neutral,
purely receptive void, which he des-
ignates with the word “chora.” Der-
rida uses this Platonic term to refer
to the idea of a nonanthropological,
nontheological space that should be
understood as a precondition for
the existence of any void.^116 The ques-
tion that Derrida is implicitly raising
here is whether Libeskind’s building
4
Architecture as Critique of ModernityDaniel Libeskind, extension
of the Berlin Museum
with the Jewish Museum,
void and void bridges.
(Photo: Bitter Bredt.)
94