Jewish Museum, Berlin
Architect: Daniel Libeskind
Location: Berlin, Germany
Completed: 1999

Photo: © Guenter Schneider

When Daniel Libeskind was commissioned to design a new Jewish Museum in Berlin, it opened up a difficult but fascinating question: could the design of a building help to tell the story of one of one of the worst events in human history - the holocaust.

Photo: © Bitter Bredt

Although the remit of the museum is to exhibit 'the social, political and cultural history of the Jews in Germany from the fourth century to the present', even the act of building a Jewish Museum in Berlin made a considerable statement about the terrible fate of those who were persecuted and killed in the holocaust.

Like much art and literature, the building can be interpreted in different ways by different viewers (or users). The novelist Howard Jacobson, for example, describes gouges and slashes on the building's exterior which could, if you narrow your eyes, rearrange themselves into the star of David. As Jacobson also acknowledged, though, it is the form of the building itself that, according to its architect 'derives from a dislocated Star of David'.

The new building is housed next to the site of the original Prussian Court of Justice building which was completed in 1735 now serves as the entrance to the new building.