Gabion: The cabinet of Dr. Libeskind: he finally builds in London. But not where you'd expect 1/5

Text and images © Hugh Pearman. A fuller version of the piece first published in The Sunday Times, London, January 25 2004, as "University Challenge".

When the exotic becomes the everyday, then an architect starts to face his sternest test: how to keep ahead of the game? Take Daniel Libeskind. His career to date has been fashioned by heroic one-offs: none more so than his design to rebuild Ground Zero in New York, which made him a world-class celebrity who appears wearing his trademark ventilated black spectacles on the Oprah Winfrey show. Libeskind has now nearly completed his first London building. It is not grand. It is not central. It is not for a prestigious client. It won't get him on Parkinson. It is a little university building on the Holloway Road.

This is one tough, whirling urban nexus. The Holloway Road, an ancient route, is a traffic canyon heading north-west out of the capital - or south-east into the capital, depending on your standpoint. It is also an eclectic mix of shops, pubs, entertainment venues, office blocks, council flats and light industry. Also a large chunk of London Metropolitan University, one of those newer, oft-relaunched universities that lurk towards the bottom of the academic league tables. In recent years, however, LMU has been trying to make a bit of an architectural statement of its Holloway Road campus. And architectural statements don't come much more emphatic than the ones with Libeskind's signature on them. Hence the arrival of his new Graduate School, which opens in March.