First name terms and social diffidence are not quite what you would expect from an architect who has burst on to the world stage with designs that become instant talking points. The Polish-American architect has made it his mission to design "high-impact" buildings that redefine our idea of what a museum or an urban village or a concert hall actually is. And he wants to do this in a new architectural language, "just like we have new ideas in the arts, music or the sciences. Why shouldn't architecture have new ideas?"
But Trafford council's staff do not meet the driven egotist that these comments might imply. The man clients meet is courteous, with an open, unguarded face. Wearing a dark suit and collarless shirt, he waits patiently for questions before answering with soft-voiced conviction. He talks in a high-speed New York Jewish accent familiar to anyone who has watched Seinfeld or a Woody Allen film. Even when he describes Manchester as "like the Bronx. There's a vitality here I love", you sense that the city will forgive him.
The Trafford war museum team – which is launching the project on 25 January – is one of a growing number of UK clients to put its faith in him. One of the three consortia shortlisted for the Allerton Bywater Millennium Village is hoping that the Libeskind-effect will win the day. The trustees of the V&A have championed his competition-winning design for their museum extension through four years of controversy. And last November, the councillors of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea also took a considerable leap of faith when they granted it planning permission.
In fact, the V&A is so committed to Libeskind that it has taken the unusual step of allowing him to build the Spiral without the staying hand of a UK associate architect. "The V&A has asked me to be the sole architect. They don't want something mediated by somebody else," he says. "I'm interested in the crafted nature of the building and that has to be done individually." It's a textbook architect-client relationship, in sharp contrast with the tale of Zaha Hadid and the Cardiff Bay Opera House.
It’s a question of smelling the building. You’ve got to follow your nose, your intuition
So, what do these clients get when they put their trust in Libeskind? Not quite Hadid-style deconstructivism, where literary theory is translated into buildings that deliberately divorce form and function. Libeskind's buildings may look like close relatives, but in his style, the structure is derived from symbolic association, and the shape of a museum building communicates its purpose as much as its contents. "If one doesn't make the link to cultural values, then it's just a pile of drawings being built into anonymous forms." For instance, the intersections of walls and windows, light and shadow in Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin are based on his painstaking research into the lives of the city's pre-Holocaust Jewish community. In Manchester, the globe bisected by shards is "not just another museum building. It's about conflict, about the 20th century, and about how to convey the importance of these events for the future." The V&A's Spiral, seven floors of exhibition space piled lopsidedly into a gap site, may seem more like engineering exuberance than a coded analogy of the institution it belongs to. But to Libeskind, the building's shape is a "concrete and symbolic celebration", indebted to William Morris' views on spirals in art and architecture, as well as the product of research "into the functional needs of the museum and the cultural needs of the public. These needs are not just a bunch of functions to be added up. They need a form that is compelling, that is related to the creative essence of the V&A."
A dialogue with the public
Libeskind has a deeply held desire to involve the public in a creative dialogue with his buildings. "The Spiral should open up the V&A, so the public dare to go into the inaccessible zones of the museum." He describes his work on the Millennium Village as "not just about the form or style of architecture, but about how people will live in the 21st century".
A decade ago, any would-be client seeking similar insight could only have referred to his lectures and writings. At 52, Libeskind has only been a "building" architect for 10 years, following an academic career that has taken in a PhD in architectural history from Essex University, a spell as a unit master at the Architectural Association in the 1970s, and teaching posts in the USA, London and Japan.
Architecture has to do with an understanding of language, and geometry, and music, and all the arts
Libeskind came to architecture via music and maths, and now argues that the discipline "isn't like being a lawyer or a doctor. It has to do with an understanding of language, and geometry, and music, and all the arts." The profusion of competitions to redesign post-unification Berlin seem to have been the catalyst in his career. He established an office there 10 years ago after winning the Jewish museum competition, and subsequently worked on proposals for Alexanderplatz and Potsdamer Platz. The office now has 30 members of staff, and is working on projects including a Jewish museum in San Francisco, a university in Mexico, and a housing development in Berlin. His one regret in this success story is that all but one commission – a private villa in Spain – has been the result of a design competition. "So far, no one's said: 'Mr Libeskind, build us a piece of a city.' "
The comment is typical of the homespun way Libeskind often talks about his work. He describes preserving the integrity of his designs, whatever the budgetary or planning constraints, as a question of "smelling the building. You've got to follow your nose, your intuition." Libeskind also insists that he is very much a hands-on architect, not "somehow aloof from all the people who have to build it", and is at pains to credit the work of engineer Ove Arup & Partners on the Spiral.
Inspiring a new generation
But despite being convincingly down-to-earth, Libeskind is in no doubt of his place in the architectural firmament. He refers to his buildings as "great projects" or "my museums", and believes that their symbolism, pattern and geometry are already inspiring a new generation of architects. "It might be recognisable in certain ways of thinking and doing architecture, particularly in the young generation."
