Memorials in general have always been a powerful storytelling landscapes as well as a political statements, usually accompanied with conventional symbols in order to be understood by the majority. Sometimes, designers are able to find an unconventional, more advanced way to express the story behind an object of remembrance. This particular memorial is dedicated to the murdered Jews of Europe, and represents the political system of Nazism and it’s behavior towards Jews in Europe under the government of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. Memorial consists of 2,711 concrete slabs, arranged in a grid based system, some slabs are higher than other, some are missing at the edges, which could describe a process of spreading or decomposing at the margins. It is a cold, hard, deaf, heavy, extremely un-natural environment, contrasted with the Tiergarten park across the street. Though the memorial is a very confusing concrete landscape, and you can easily lose orientation (especially, when you are deep inside, where slabs reach a height of nearly 5 meters) you can’t hide. At every moment you can be seen from a great distance, since the paths are straight. See more photos on wiki.
Design: Peter Eisenman, architect and Buro Happold, engineer
Location: Berlin, Germany
Competition: 1997
Construction: 2004
Area: 19,000m²
Cost: €25 million.
