"We will work with everybody for the good of New York"
About this Quote
A promise of openness, delivered with the blunt optimism of someone who knows a skyline is never just a skyline. When Daniel Libeskind says, "We will work with everybody for the good of New York", he is speaking in the coded language of post-crisis civic repair: collaboration as both moral stance and political survival tactic. Coming from an architect most associated with memorial architecture and the emotional charge of absence, the line quietly acknowledges that building in New York is less about authorial purity than about negotiating a city-sized argument.
The phrasing is doing two jobs at once. "Everybody" is aspirational, but it also preemptively defuses the inevitable accusations of exclusion that trail major urban projects: whose grief counts, whose money talks, whose neighborhood gets reshaped. "For the good of New York" sounds altruistic, yet it conveniently blurs what "good" means in a place where public good is constantly contested by real estate pressures, security demands, and competing visions of what the city should symbolize to the world.
Libeskind is also positioning himself as a mediator, not just a designer. In the shadow of high-stakes redevelopment - especially when the site carries national trauma and global attention - the architect has to perform humility without surrendering the narrative. This is coalition-building as rhetoric: a reassurance to officials, stakeholders, and citizens that the project will be participatory, while leaving room to steer decisions through the velvet glove of consensus. The subtext: I can make art here, but only if I can make peace.
The phrasing is doing two jobs at once. "Everybody" is aspirational, but it also preemptively defuses the inevitable accusations of exclusion that trail major urban projects: whose grief counts, whose money talks, whose neighborhood gets reshaped. "For the good of New York" sounds altruistic, yet it conveniently blurs what "good" means in a place where public good is constantly contested by real estate pressures, security demands, and competing visions of what the city should symbolize to the world.
Libeskind is also positioning himself as a mediator, not just a designer. In the shadow of high-stakes redevelopment - especially when the site carries national trauma and global attention - the architect has to perform humility without surrendering the narrative. This is coalition-building as rhetoric: a reassurance to officials, stakeholders, and citizens that the project will be participatory, while leaving room to steer decisions through the velvet glove of consensus. The subtext: I can make art here, but only if I can make peace.
Quote Details
| Topic | Team Building |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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