This building will not be about toilets

My dear friend got me a Border's gift voucher for my birthday (she knows me well like that). Happy, I spent the whole afternoon by myself browsing through the aisles, reading bits of what seemed potentially good reads, when I came across Daniel Libeskind's "Breaking Ground; adventures in life and architecture".

Once in awhile if you're lucky you come across a book that's so good (just what you need) you savour every word of it.

In his first chapter 'foundations' he talked about his briefing on the extension of the Berlin Museum for the Jewish department:

"After a thorough briefing by our hosts, we were led to the site where the wing would be built, a dusty little playground that occasionally hosted travelling circuses. My colleagues snapped cameras furiously, documenting every angle of the angles, but I took no pictures, because I was experiencing something that couldn't be captured on film. As I walked around, all I could think of was everything BUT the site. How can one capture a past so vital and creative, and at the same time so ugly and painful? How can one, using just motar and glass and steel, capture simultaneously a turbulent past and an unforeseeable future?

A German accent broke through my thoughts. 'You are facing East,' the man said. 'Walk that way, to Kochstrasse, a few minutes, and you will be at Checkpoint Charlie.'

The voice was that of Walter Nobel, a nice young man who would soon become well known as an architect in Berlin. 'You are new here.' he told me gently. 'You don't know us Germans. You don't understand how it works. Everything must be done meticulously. You must know the following.' He pulled out a pad and began writing down a long series of numbers.

'You must know the toilet measurements. Along with the fire regulations, the toilet measurements are the most important things to know....'

When he finished, I thanked him and tucked his notes into my coat pocket. That evening in my hotel room, as I got ready for bed, I pulled the notes out and tossed them in the garbage. This building would not be about toilets."