Nina can now afford to laugh about the frenzy of media speculation that frothed around the last stages of the international competition to rebuild the shattered site of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers. The personality of Libeskind - a little, slightly tubby and cheerful man of 57 who looks a decade younger, and who habitually sports rectangular designer specs, leather jacket and cowboy boots - was dissected. His appearance was compared to that of his dapper main rival, architect Rafael Vinoly, whose sober black attire makes him look like a priest, and who tends to wear three pairs of spectacles simultaneously on chains round his neck. Libeskind was asked to name his favourite things by Rolling Stone. He was even nicknamed "Sprockets" after a caricature German intellectual played by Mike Meyers on Saturday Night Live. It's not like this in continental Europe, where big-name architects are revered for their work rather than for what they happen to be wearing or buying. "Those spectacles," sighs Nina. "They just happen to be the only pair Daniel could find that don't fog up when he's perspiring under studio lights. They're ventilated. It means he can see!"

Perspiring under studio lights is maybe not something that crops up in many architects' daily routines, but for Libeskind it is second nature. He is a performer. He had an earlier career as a concert pianist - having started off playing the piano accordion as a child in his Polish home city of Lodz because, as he says, the rectangular accordion does not look like a musical instrument when it is in its case. Carrying a violin, say, in post-war Poland was an invitation to invective or worse: the violin was seen as a Jewish instrument, and Polish anti-semitism had survived the war in full vigour. The fact that many members of the Libeskind family had died during the Holocaust was not seen as a reason for sympathy. Small wonder that the family emigrated, first to the new state of Israel, where Libeskind's musical talents were recognized and nurtured alongside those of Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. He won competitions. The family then moved to America, where eventually he started to play professionally at Carnegie Hall, earning good money.