Moneo, Libeskind and a question of influence

This paper focuses on two museum buildings designed in the 1980s: Rafael Moneo's Museum of Roman Art in Merida (1980-86) and Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin (1988-99, 2001). The first consolidated the initial phase of Moneo's career, while the second, over-interpreted in subsequent criticism, ignited Libeskind's reputation as a theorist who could build. Approaching the design of both museums with Aldo Rossi's influence in mind, the particular focus is the relationship between concepts of order and contingency associated with the theme of temporality recurrent in his architecture. This retrospective examination was initially conceived in response to Robin Evans's review of Libeskind's Chamberworks, where he remarked on the efficacy of Rossi's short preface. Relationships discovered in comparative examination of these two polemically divergent buildings credit Rossi with a more nuanced influence on late twentieth-century architecture than is generally attributed to his work (currently at the margins of architectural discourse)