Architect of Ground Zero Condemns Building for Despots

A leading architect from his own country and the Western world criticized architects who are willing to "build gleaming streets for despots," reported The Independent.

Daniel Libeskind, said he will never work with "morally questionable" clients.

"Even if they produce gleaming towers, if they are morally questionable, I'm not interested," he said in the interview with The Architects' Journal. "Architects have to take responsibility for their work. I can't separate the formal geometry from the context of who they were commissioned by and the morality of those states."

The Independent suggests the comments could be directed toward rivals in the Western front who have built in Gulf regions where freedom is strictly limited, or two United Kingdom firms who built projects in formerly suppressed Soviet states. 

Libeskind, a Polish-born turned American-Israeli-dual citizen, is renowned for his projects including the Jewish Museum Berlin in Germany and Ground Zero memorial in New York. 

Libeskind wrote on the World Trade Center project page that while many New Yorkers were unsure to rebuild or keep the site empty, he wanted listen and watch those who would visit then make his final plan on the drawing board. 

"I knew that whatever was built had to let us enter this ground while at the same time creating a quiet, meditative and spiritual space," he wrote on his page. "We needed a way to journey down 70 feet into the chasm, past the slurry wall, a procession with deliberation. Regardless of the revitalization going on aboveground, this part of the site had to be maintained to honor the dead."

Libeskind said that architects can have a purpose when they create and design work, but they should be cautious of that when working on, "Communist architecture or any architecture that is to do with sheer oppression."