Daniel Libeskind: Philosopher who creates buildings that perform to the public

Yesterday the Imperial War Museum North opened in Manchester, the first building in this country by the distinguished architect Daniel Libeskind. At last, without any help from the lottery, Britain can boast a world-class piece of modern architecture, something to rival Frank Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao or IM Pei's extension to the Louvre in Paris.

In Britain, successive governments have been strangely reluctant to realise that cutting-edge architecture is not only an essential part of urban regeneration, but it will also act as a monument to a political regime. We seem to be obsessed with putting new buildings inside old ones, from Tate Modern to the British Museum to the Baltic in Newcastle (which opens soon). Sir Richard Rogers, our leading architect, even lives in a Georgian house in Chelsea, albeit one he has made over dramatically. And the Royal Family endorses ghastly quasi-classical work like the new Queen's Picture Gallery by John Simpson.

However, with the Imperial War Museum, Daniel Libeskind has laid down a marker – and this is only the third building he has completed, at the age of 55. A philosopher, intellectual, brilliant draughtsman and uncompromising modernist, this Polish-born maverick has kick-started the debate about how we want our cities to be in the 21st century – and it's not about pedestrianised areas, traffic flow or skylines. We are talking about blood-and-guts architecture, unforgettable buildings that you cannot ignore.

Libeskind hit the headlines here in 1996 when he won the competition to build the extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington. Condemned by residents, his uncompromising design – the Spiral – won the backing of English Heritage as well as planning permission in a notoriously conservative (in more ways than one) area.

In The Times, Lord Rees-Mogg called the design "a disaster for the V&A in particular and for civilisation in general... we are all being invited to take a walk in the desert with the Devil". Six years later that seems, like so many of Prince Charles's pronouncements about modern architecture, hysterically over the top. Libeskind demands that we create a better way to live in the present, and stop mimicking the past. And there's no better place to demonstrate that than at the V&A. The museum, a jumble of Victorian and Edwardian buildings over 12 acres, is a nightmare to navigate. Libeskind describes his proposed extension as a "chance to reorientate visitors so they can see just how great this museum is... the Spiral is a reminder that the museum was originally a contemporary structure".

Bursting on to Exhibition Road, the Spiral doesn't so much link the old and the new as scream the presence of an institution that is firmly in the 21st century. It will contain public spaces, a roof-top restaurant and galleries for contemporary collections, but more importantly it places modern architecture right at the centre of things. Libeskind describes it as a 21st-century icon, and he is right, as its purpose is political rather than practical.

In the cultural war of premier league museums, he is the Sven Goran Eriksson – the brilliant philosopher, excelling at fundraising and public relations. The new director of the V&A, Mark Jones, is determined that the Spiral will be built, and fundraising is under way, the building having been denied lottery money. It is already being rebudgeted to cost less than the original £75m.

Libeskind, who was born in Poland to parents who had fled eastern Europe and married in America, studied music in Israel and New York, graduating from the accordion to the piano, becoming a virtuoso performer who played professionally at Carnegie Hall. Switching to architecture at 16, he studied in New York and at the University of Essex. Subsequently he lectured and taught at many universities, including my former college, the Architectural Association, in London. He made models and drawings, exhibiting at the 1985 Venice Biennale.

His life changed when he won the competition to build the Jewish Museum in Berlin in 1989. When the building opened in September 2001, many people were moved to tears by the poignant spaces he had created. It is important to understand that Libeskind's musical training comes into play in every aspect of his work – it has been said he creates buildings that "perform", and they certainly attract strong responses from the public. His own family lost 85 members to the Holocaust, but Libeskind would not be content with creating a structure simply to commemorate the past – that would not be challenging enough. He seeks to change the way we see things, to engage us in new ways of thinking about fundamentals, from shopping to the mindless conflict of war.

The Jewish Museum, clad in zinc and with windows shaped like shards of glass, has at its centre the Holocaust Tower, a dim concrete chamber where the door slams shut behind you. Many people find this experience so overpowering they have to leave. Having won the competition to build the museum, Libeskind and his wife Nina made the momentous decision to live in Berlin, and that is where he has made his base ever since, with an office now employing more than 50 assistants.

Libeskind had arrived in Berlin four months before the fall of the Wall, filled with mixed emotions – his own family had emigrated from Poland to Israel before settling in America. He calls it "Jewish geography". Of his period spent teaching, drawing and thinking, he says: "(most architects) build their buildings and have the more meditative aspect later. I don't know why."

Now his architectural practice is 11 years old, and the Jewish Museum has attracted millions of visitors, Libeskind has a large portfolio of projects under way, from an extension to a museum in Ontario to a convention centre in Tel Aviv and the graduate school for the University of North London. But he still insists that he draws every detail himself: "Architecture is not just a technical profession, for me it is an artistic one... architecture is a big thing, and my work has not just been about what gets built, but about creating debate and discourse about what should be built."

Like all architects, there is a giant ego at play here, and there's obviously no love lost when it comes to talking about rivals such as Rem Koolhaas. But Libeskind is a charming and very funny man, who relies on Nina to run his life. He's got more articulate, probably as a result of the vast amount of fundraising he's had to do to get anything built. A conversation with him is like jumping on a roller-coaster of ideas; fast, frenetic and opinionated.

The Imperial War Museum North sits on the Salford Quays opposite the Lowry Centre, itself a busy but thoroughly second-division piece of work. Libeskind's offering is, as usual, stark and uncompromising, constructed of steel, concrete and asphalt and consisting of three forms derived from breaking a globe into shards, symbolising conflict on earth, in air and in water. You enter through a viewing tower into a vast cathedral-like main exhibition space, where the floor literally drops away beneath your feet. Giant silos contain themed exhibits, but the main arena is magnificently empty. Libeskind has once again used a philosophical approach to create a dynamic piece of theatre, a building that, regardless of what is in it, engages you in a debate about the nature of conflict itself. And he has proved that this will result in something popular – "I am in no doubt that the Imperial War Museum will be every bit as successful as the Jewish Museum in Berlin."

All too often architects are concerned with finishes, with creating a meaningful shape that then has to work on a practical level – look at London's new city hall by Lord Foster, thrusting up on the banks of the Thames by Tower Bridge. This is a prime example of dick-on-table architecture, something trying to be very self-important, when frankly it is not anything more than function being forced to fit form.

Libeskind's building's are not expensive, and when he lost 40 per cent of the budget for the Imperial War Museum North, he just came up with something costing a paltry £30m, extremely cost-effective construction. He has said: "People always think my ideas are expensive, but they are not. They say constructing a box is a cheap solution, but it isn't."

Now he's working on a huge shopping complex, a mini city, in Berne. It will contain entertainment centres, restaurants and a whole range of facilities, but Libeskind doesn't regard the job as less intellectually demanding than a museum: "I want to reinvent the whole idea of a mall, to get away from the nostalgic horror of atriums, to make shopping an artistic experience."

Having completed his first house, for an artist in Majorca, he's turned his attention back to music, with his production of Messiaen's 1983 opera St Francis of Assisi just opening in Berlin. Libeskind took over directing and choreography after his collaborator Johann Kresnik walked out. Somehow I don't see this man as a team player.

In the last 10 years modern architecture has become far more widely discussed and appreciated, and yet it could be argued that much of it is still second rate. Libeskind recognises that at last architecture is being accepted as as a dominant force in our lives, and he has the chance to play a big part in shaping that force by creating controversial and provocative buildings that are used by ordinary members of the public, not shining monuments to monolithic corporations.

"Architecture should move you in a visceral way, something you experience and walk away from with strong memories," he said recently. The Imperial War Museum North more than answers that agenda.

Life story

Born: Daniel Libeskind in Lodz, Poland 12 May 1946, to Nachman and Dora Libeskind

Family Married Nina Lewis in 1969; they have two sons and one daughter

Education Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York (BArc, 1970); School of Comparative Studies, University of Essex (MA in history and theory of architecture, 1971).

Career Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York 1971-72; Irving Grossman Associates, Toronto 1972-73; assistant professor of architecture, University of Kentucky 1973-75; associate professor of architecture, University of Toronto, 1977-78; architect in residence, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1978-85;

Founder and Director of Architecture Intermundium, Milan, 1986-89; has run his own architect's practice in, Berlin since 1990.

Major works Uozu Mt Pavilion, Japan 1997; Polderland Garden, Netherlands 1997; Felix Nussbaum Haus, Osnabrück, 1998; Jewish Museum, Berlin 1999; The Imperial War Museum North, Manchester (left), 2002

Honours Berlin Cultural Prize, 1996.

He says "The spirit of architecture wanders where it will."

They say "We are all being invited to take a walk in the desert with the Devil" – Lord Rees-Mogg