Architect Daniel Libeskind on Working Unconventionally

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2018

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Daniel Libeskind, a former academic turned architect and urban designer, discusses his unorthodox career path and repeat success at high-profile, emotionally charged projects. He also talks about his unusual creative process and shares tips for collaborating and managing emotions and expectations of multiple stakeholders. Libeskind was interviewed for the July-August 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Kurt Nick is here from Ideacast. I want to tell you about the Big Take
0:05.1	podcast from Bloomberg News. Each weekday they bring you one important story
0:10.0	from their global newsroom like how AI will upend your life and why China's
0:15.4	targeting the US dollar. Check out the big take from Bloomberg wherever you
0:20.2	listen. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green-Kermichael.
0:43.0	Architect Daniel Leibeskin is known for taking on high-profile emotionally intense projects.
0:55.6	He redesigned the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the reconstruction of Ground Zero in New York.
1:01.5	Today he leads a practice of 50 employees working on architectural
1:05.1	commissions all over the world, but he didn't start doing this kind of work
1:09.0	until the middle of his career. He was an academic until he was in his 40s. He spoke about his
1:15.5	unusual career path and an Orthodox leadership style with Harvard Business
1:20.1	Review senior editor Allison Beard.
1:23.0	She started by asking him about that fateful career turning point when he won the competition
1:28.2	to design the Jewish Museum in Berlin at the age of 43. It's just a lock I would say that changed my direction in life
1:37.7	because I started my own kind of architecture institute in Milan and then I enrolled in a competition and lo and behold that
1:46.6	whole path open to me and of course you know I never really worked for other architects
1:51.8	I you know I tried it but I didn't find it fulfilling. So I thought I would try another path.
1:57.6	And what about that competition called out to you? Had you applied for others or? No I never applied it was because it was in Berlin and
2:06.0	because I have a someone whose parents were Holocaust survivors and who grew up in
2:11.0	they're very close to Germany, Poland, I thought that it was a
2:16.5	competition where the wall still stood in Berlin in 1987 and I thought
2:21.8	that's so interesting. Why don't I sort of respond to this call for housing at the edge of the wall?
	...

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