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 Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about

THE JEWISH MUSEUM

The Jewish Museum Berlin is located in what was West Berlin before the fall of the Wall. Essentially, it consists of two buildings – a baroque old building, the “Kollegienhaus” (that formerly housed the Berlin Museum) and a new, deconstructivist-style building by Libeskind. The two buildings have no visible connection above ground. The Libeskind building, consisting of about 161,000 square feet (15,000 square meters), is a twisted zig-zag and is accessible only via an underground passage from the old building.

For Libeskind,

The new design, which was created a year before the Berlin Wall came down, was based on three conceptions that formed the museum’s foundation: first, the impossibility of understanding the history of Berlin without understanding the enormous intellectual, economic and cultural contribution made by the Jewish citizens of Berlin, second, the necessity to integrate physically and spiritually the meaning of the Holocaust into the consciousness and memory of the city of Berlin. Third, that only through the acknowledgement and incorporation of this erasure and void of Jewish life in Berlin, can the history of Berlin and Europe have a human future.

A line of "Voids", empty spaces about 66 feet (20 m) tall, slices linearly through the entire building. Such voids represent "That which can never be exhibited when it comes to Jewish Berlin history: Humanity reduced to ashes."

In the basement, visitors first encounter three intersecting, slanting corridors named the "Axes." Here a similarity to Libeskind's first building – the Felix Nussbaum Haus – is apparent, which is also divided into three areas with different meanings. In Berlin, the three axes symbolize three paths of Jewish life in Germany – continuity in German history, emigration from Germany, and the Holocaust.

The second axis connects the Museum proper to the Garden of Exile, whose foundation is tilted. The Garden's oleaster grows out of reach, atop 49 tall pillars. The third axis leads from the Museum to the Holocaust Tower, a 79-foot (24 m) tall empty silo. The bare concrete Tower is neither heated nor cooled, and its only light comes from a small slit in its roof. The Jewish Museum Berlin was Libeskind's first major international success.

In recent years, Libeskind has designed two structural extensions: a covering made of glass and steel for the "Kollegienhaus" courtyard (2007), and the W. Michael Blumenthal Academy of the Jewish Museum in a rectangular, 2,700 sq ft (250 m2) 1960s flower market hall on the opposite side of the street (2012).

In 2016, a jury appointed by the Jewish Museum Berlin awarded the first prize in an architectural competition for a new €3.44 million children's museum for 5 to 12 year-olds to Olson Kundig Architects; the second prize was awarded to the Berlin firm Staab Architekten and third prize to Michael Wallraff of Vienna. The planned children's museum will be housed in the W. Michael Blumenthal Academy and is scheduled to open in spring 2020.