Libeskind to Build Warsaw Tower
The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
The 45-story apartment tower will be built in Warsaw's business district
WARSAW --
Polish-born American architect Daniel Libeskind, designer of Berlin's landmark Jewish Museum and the master plan for New York's Ground Zero, has designed a 45-story apartment tower to be built in downtown Warsaw , a city spokesman said Friday.
When finished, Libeskind's sweeping glass tower is expected to rise to 192 meters, just a little short of the city's Stalin-era landmark and tallest building, the Palace of Culture.
Libeskind presented his plans to city officials on Thursday in Warsaw, where they were positively received, Warsaw chief architect Michal Borowski said.
Borowski added that city hall was enthusiastic about building a residential tower in Warsaw's growing downtown business district.
By doing so, Borowski said, Warsaw "can avoid a central business district that is dark at night, where people don't live."
Pending final approval of the design, construction of the building is expected to start next year and finish in 2008, said Marcin Roszkowski, a spokesman for city hall.
Libeskind envisions restaurants, cafes and art galleries at ground level, with apartments filling the rest.
Earlier this year, a design by Libeskind for a planned museum on Jewish history in Warsaw was rejected in favor of an austere design by a Finnish team of architects.
Since communism's end in 1989, the Polish capital has been shaking off its communist architectural past and its ubiquitous bloc architecture, and now hosts a growing skyline of modern glass towers centered around the Palace of Culture.
The landmark was a "gift" from the Soviet Union in 1955.
Libeskind, 59, was born to Holocaust survivors in the central Polish city of Lodz and became a U.S. citizen in 1965.