Breaking Ground : Adventures in Life and Architecture

Born in communist Poland to Jewish Holocaust survivors, Daniel Libeskind has designed iconic buildings around the world - including the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester and the V&A 'Spiral'. Now he has been chosen as the Master Plan architect for New York's World Trade Center reconstruction - a city of which he has long become, since his boyhood emigration, an adopted son. This is a book about the adventure life can offer each of us if we seize it, and about the powerful forces of tragedy, memory and hope. For Daniel Libeskind, life's adventure has been through architecture, which he has found has the power to reshape human experience. Although often relating to the past, his buildings are about the future. This memoir of one man's journey brings together history, personal experience, our physical environment and a fresh international vision. The world is painfully aware of the World Trade Center tragedy; here are ideas that could form the germ of our emotional, creative and practical response to it - a response that could have truly positive implications for humanity.