Oh, Danny Boy

Arcspace's latest update features The Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, which opened on June 8. Designed by Daniel Libeskind, the Museum is a renovation of a 16th century boathouse of brick construction.



The architect squeezed a labyrinth of wood-paneled corridors at odd angles within the already-small rooms. Display cases are cut into the canted walls, as are slots of light. The space seems to be a cross between Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin, Kurt Schwitters's Merzbau and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.


Plan of the Museum

Supposedly the angled walls and sloping floors are "to make visitors feel they are standing on a boat; a reminder of the rocking seas thousands of Jews crossed as they fled Nazi-occupied Denmark for neutral Sweden."

I think this is the perfect building for Libeskind, just like the predecessor in Berlin. But is he the man to oversee 10 million s.f. of office space in downtown Manhattan? Apparently many people think not.