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For noted architect Daniel Libeskind, his Jewish identity is not an incidental part of his biography or a trait somehow separate from his work as a master builder.

"It's not as if I designed just a pretty picture or as if I was interested in an aesthetic or architectural expression, because perhaps what it's really deeper than that is a sense that Jewish traditions have always been part of dealing with history, with memory, and with life not as an abstraction," Libeskind said in a conversation with Samuel Norich, publisher of the Forward, at Kean University April 1.

Libeskind, one of the most prominent architects working today, has designed buildings throughout the world including the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Jewish Museum in San Francisco, and the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England, among others. He was also the winner of the international competition to design the World Trade Center site after its destruction in the 2001 terrorist attack.

Libeskind, the son of Holocaust survivors, was born in Poland in 1946. His parents, Polish Jews, had escaped the Nazi onslaught at the beginning of the war only to spend the war years in a Soviet gulag in Kyrgyzstan. Having survived the war, his parents returned to Poland, where Libeskind spent the first 11 years of his life before immigrating with his family to Israel.

"I speak Polish, I read Polish, I went to a Polish school until the 4th grade and I experienced first-hand the evils of communist society and the anti-Semitism that was so deeply embedded in life in post-war 'democracy,'" Libeskind recalled.

"It gave me a different sense of, and maybe a different appreciation of what a democracy is. I don't take it for granted," he added.

A gifted musician from a young age, his original instrument was the accordion since his parents feared that a piano would arouse suspicion from their Polish neighbors about their wealth, further fueling anti-Semitic sentiments.

Upon arriving to Israel, Libeskind switched to the piano and two years later, in 1959, won the prestigious America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship allowing him and his family to relocate in the United States, specifically to the Bronx.

He attended the Bronx High School of Science and then began his studies of architecture at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, followed by post-graduate studies in Europe.

Following his studies, Libeskind worked briefly in several architectural firms, but for the next two decades he focused on teaching the next generation of architects as a faculty member at universities throughout North America and Europe. It was not until he was 53 years old that Libeskind completed his first building. This building was the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

The composition of the building is winding and angular, and is often described as resembling an unraveled, deconstructed Star of David. Asked about his designs' incorporation of fragmentation, Libeskind replied: "We don't live in a unified, coherent, harmoniously balanced world; we live in a world of fragments. So much has been destroyed and so much is missing. And I think that's inevitable whether an artists, a writer, a poet, it's probably true for every person that thinks."

Libeskind acknowledged that it was difficult for him emotionally to relocate to Germany for the project, which took approximately 10 years to complete. For many years prior to this he said that he deliberately avoided visiting Germany even when living nearby.

"I moved on a spur of a moment and it was very difficult to come with three children. It was difficult and became easier as I saw the older generation disappear gradually from the scene and younger people, and I felt that there was gradual change, slow change in Germany," he said.

Norich asked Libeskind about why his buildings' designs sometimes make people physically disoriented or feel uncomfortable, an effect that is often attributed to the Jewish Museum in particular.

"Every building has a message. Every building has something to say," Libeskind explained. "Some buildings say, 'I'm a very nice building, I have a very nice façade and look at me'."

"Another message might be," he continued, " 'I have four corners, I'm very stable, and everything in the world is fine'."

"Those are legitimate messages, but they are not mine," he said.

Rather, Libeskind said, he intends his buildings to raise questions, which he described as a "quintessentially Jewish" approach.

"A building should not confirm our notions about the world, it should challenge us to think and view the world maybe slightly differently," he said, adding "I wouldn't say that my strategy is to be uncomfortable. I think there is something comforting to know that you're not completely comfortable."

Norich also asked Libeskind about his approach toward Modernism, to which the architect quickly replied, "First of all the word 'ism' I dislike. I dislike all 'ism's'."

"The Modernist ideology does not appeal to me for many, many reasons, but mostly for its fanatic belief that controlled reason will bring a better life," Libeskind said. "That it's not about people, it's not about emotion. That it's simply about creating a neutralized space which is objective in some way."

Libeskind lamented this ideology, which he said has "pervaded modern consciousness."

"How people long for order and yet whenever I hear the word "order" or lets create a space that's kind of neutral, it worries me," he said. "Because I believe that underneath it are echoes of coercion."

Asked by Norich why he decided to give up music and pursue architecture instead, Libeskind said that he feels he hasn't given up music at all, noting the commonalities between the two fields.

"The fact is that their message is never through the head, it's through the heart," Libeskind said about the shared traits of music and architecture. "You can know all there is about a Bach fugue, or a Schubert sonata, or a Mendelssohn quartet, but its impact has very little to do with your knowledge even if you follow the music -- it's about the transcendental, the mystical power of music to form your perception of the world. In that sense, it's very similar to architecture. Architecture is all about technology, walls, windows, all these kinds of things, and we don't think of any of this when we walk into a building."

Libeskind noted that he considers the musical qualities of buildings in their design. Specifically, in creating the Jewish Museum in Berlin, he said he was thinking of Austrian Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg's opera "Moses und Aaron," in which the third part was left unfinished.

Libeskind said that he when designing the atrium of the museum, he intended for the sounds of the shuffling of the visitors' footsteps to complete the piece.

"It's completed not by the orchestra, but by shoes."