The sixth major Daniel Libeskind building that I have ever visited (after Berlin, Toronto, Denver, San Francisco and Covington), the Imperial War Museum North architecturally uses the same language despite a comparably radically different (and not quite as angled) form. A giant fractured dome (with for some reason an uncomfortably pitched floor) holds the bulk of the museum while a see through observation tower marks the entrance and generally looks good as you approach the building. The tower has a skin which is not quite closed and an interior structure which (except for a concrete elevator shaft) is completely open. The effect from the outside as you walk around is fun- light sometimes pokes through the tower revealing little hints of the structure as you approach the building. Additionally the inside of the tower is fun- everything from looking up through the open structure to looking down through the open metal grate top deck gives you a great sense of the form and of being suspended at such great heights. What isn't as much fun is the view out. The same rules that allow the tower's skin to be open and its floor to be see through also apparently prevent an actual open observation window to look out of the damn thing from the top. A slightly cropped and blocked opening does point toward the north and downtown, while 350 degrees of an otherwise spectacular 360 degree view remains blocked. This observation tower finally answers the age old question of what would it be like if you built an observation tower with no windows at the top, a question that probably never needed answering in the first place.

Meanwhile the free museum inside is certainly interesting but not nearly as imperial as I'd hoped. It covers Britain from World War I onwards, focusing on the human and everyday costs and less on strategy or weapons. So if you want to learn what it was like in London during World War I this is the place, but if you want to learn about life on the front lines you'd best go someplace else.