The sloping walls inside the newly opened Royal Ontario Museum extension.

Daniel Libeskind, internationally renowned architect, may catch a glimpse of his own drawings in the exhibit Drawing Architecture at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery on Thursday, October 4, when he comes to town to deliver a lecture. Catapulted into fame in 2003 by his winning proposal for the World Trade Center site competition, Libeskind’s projects have included numerous civic centers, such as the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Denver Art Museum. Libeskind’s architectural forms continue to capture the public’s eye with magnificently profound, if not equally angular and eccentric forms.

Libeskind’s design process can be seen in his sketches in the Drawing Architecture exhibition. Crystals litter his preliminary drawings for the Denver Art Museum. The drawings are ambiguous: They resemble formations of geodes, a fantasy crystalline world or a new age, sci-fi form of technology. These forms are a direct challenge to conventional museums, but Libeskind imagined these crystalline forms as a building. In 2006, the museum opened to the public—idea is transformed into reality, and drawing into form.

An exterior of the ROM, as seen from Bloor Street.

In his approaches to both the Denver Art Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum, Libeskind creates an extreme juxtaposition of old and new. His addition of bold and extreme angles collides against the more traditional existing building forms. Libeskind’s approach recalls the 1980s Deconstructivism in architecture. Work is not shown in a linear fashion but is instead monumental and jarring. Libeskind’s forms are energized and overpowering, creating dynamic spaces with sloping walls and from small to expansive spaces. The space created goes against the familiarity of the grid and the relatively straightforward engagement typical of museums.

Another interesting design element of the Denver Art Museum is the parking garage. The location of the parking garage was inconveniently in direct view of the museum. Libeskind engages this problem by building a set of luxury residential units that inverted the dreaded space between parking and museum. The success of architecture is not only based on buildings, but on the relationships between buildings, or in this case, between building and parking garage.

The Denver Art Museum, designed by Libeskind, opened in 2006.

Libeskind’s World Trade Center site proposal is also his most scrutinized. His initial conceptual design has been extensively revised. He remains, however, the site’s master planner and continues to work through revisions to the current plans. His role is to build and create spatial relationships between buildings. The urban landscape must balance respect for the site’s history and its future. He is working with architects, planners and developers including David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill on the new Freedom Tower, Santiago Calatrava on the PATH Station Transit Hub, and Michael Arad of Gary Handel Architects on the design of the memorial. In addition to the design of individual buildings, the importance of the World Trade Center site is to create an overall vision, where the space allows for conversation between buildings.

Daniel Libeskind will be lecturing at 5:30pm in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery Auditorium. The lecture is a collaboration between AKAG and the UB School of Architecture and Planning.