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Taking advantage of the inauguration of
Musical Labyrinth, an installation made of
Dekton pieces that is a fruit of the collabora-
tion between Daniel Libeskind and Cosentino,
we bring the Polish-American architect and
the Spanish partners Nieto and Sobejano
together at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. The
conversation revolves around themes close to
the hearts of all three. Music, for one. Enrique
Sobejano and Fuensanta Nieto are lovers of
this art – and recent winners of the competi-
tion for a center devoted to the Estonian com-
poser Arvo Pärt – and Daniel Libeskind was
a virtuoso performer in his youth. Another
shared theme is memory, the two practices
having coincided in the exhibition ‘Child-
hood Recollections: Memory in Design’ at the
London Design Festival this year.
Enrique Sobejano: Architecture is closely
linked to memory, and this not something
that is frequently discussed. Memories are in
the background of everything we do. When
people explain architecture rationally, I think
it’s a genuinely useful analysis, but there is
always something missing in the explana-
tion, something lying behind which is not
always explainable.
Daniel Libeskind: We definitely share this
view. Without memory, there wouldn’t be any
connection made in any kind of work, wheth-
er in literature, music, or theater. In music,
for example, it would be unimaginable.
Fuensanta Nieto: We learned a lot work-
ing for Arvo Pärt. You look at his musical
notations, which are basically drawings, and
you can really see architecture behind them.
DL: Absolutely. The connection between
music and architecture is not metaphorical.
It’s real. Architects also draw.
ES: In fact architects and musicians do the
same thing: make drawings to be interpreted
by others. Speaking of Arvo Pärt, one day he
told us: “My music is like white light because
white light can only be divided by a prism.
And the prism is the spirit of the listener.”
What a beautiful comparison!
DL: His music, moreover, is peaceful but
also structural, which I think is what archi-
tecture shares with music. On the one hand
it is tremendously creative, and on the other
hand it is scientific, and has to be very pre-
cise. An approximation won’t do, it has to
be exact, like architecture. It can’t be almost
the right tone or height. It’s not negotiable.
FN: I know you studied music, and were
good at it. Do you still play?
DL: I do not. It’s very hard to be a hobbyist
when you’re a professional. At fifteen I was
performing with top classical musicians in
the big venues of New York. If you read the
reviews of that time in The New York Times,
for instance, they are hardly mentioned, be-
cause I was a phenomenon! I was very short
and I had a very large accordion, so large
you could hardly see my head and feet. In
those days the accordion was considered a
folk instrument, not for Baroque pieces of
music. It was often associated with gypsies
or with poor people, or beggars. But it’s re-
ally a highly complex instrument, like a small
orchestra. It’s a pity I stopped playing, but
I am very grateful I did once play, because
if it weren’t for the accordion, I would never
have become an architect.
“Architecture is closely
linked to memory, and this
is not something that is
frequently discussed”
