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Six design teams – including globally renowned architects and artists – have
revealed their visions for a new Canadian Holocaust Monument in Ottawa.
The monument, commissioned by the federal government, is planned for a site
across the street from the Canadian War Museum. The museum hosted a public
presentation of the proposals from the six shortlisted design teams last week.
The six are the shortlist from an international design competition launched last
May.
The entrants include a high level of Canadian and international talent. The
best-known names on the list are architect Daniel Libeskind, who designed the Jewish Museum Berlin
and, in Canada, the Royal Ontario Museum's controversial 2007 expansion; and
David Adjaye, the Tanzanian-born
British architect who is a rising global star.
The memorial in Ottawa is on a blank slate: a triangular site at the corner
of Wellington and Booth streets, which is now empty. The federal government
contributed the land and will fund $4-million of the project costs; a
fundraising council is aiming for another $4.5-million in private donations.
The six proposals are:
A “journey through a star,” by the team of Libeskind, landscape architect Claude Cormier, photographer Edward Burtynsky and museum planner Gail Lord. Libeskind has designed a structure that, seen from
above, resembles a six-pointed star, the symbol of Jewish identity that in the
hands of the Nazis marked victims of extermination. Different zones within
represent different psychological and historical themes – including a “Dead End”
and a “Sky Void.” Photographs by Burtynsky
of Holocaust sites would be embedded into concrete.
An array of thin, undulating walls, by Adjaye with the Israeli artist and architect
Ron Arad, landscape architect Janet Rosenberg and art consultant Irene Szylinger. This design would create 22 pathways,
one for each country in which Jewish populations were decimated by the
Holocaust. It is the most abstract and the most purely sculptural of the
proposals. Its headline designer, Adjaye, is
leading the design of a new National Museum of African-American History and
Culture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., one of the most significant
public projects in the world.
A rising ‘landform,’ pierced with ‘squares
of sky,’ from Montreal architect Gilles
Saucier of Saucier + Perrotte and artist Marie-France Brière. This proposal is for a monument with two
levels: one set into the ground, and symbolizing the dark history of the
Holocaust, and a higher level planted with native plants.
A ‘broken world,’ from a team led by Iranian-Canadian architect HosseinAmanat and artist Esther Shalev-Gerz. They propose a half-sphere – a
‘broken world’ faced in white marble and 14 metres tall. It’s surrounded by a
curved wall of marble (intermittent to allow placing of stones) that is capped
with native grasses and shrubs.
An “excavation of the bedrock,” by the Massachusetts-based artist KrzysztofWodiczko and architect Julian Bonder. They propose to expose the bedrock of
the site, and build a sunken plaza in which aspen trees would be planted with a
mixture of Canadian soil and soil from the homelands of Canadian Holocaust
survivors.
A multi-sensory proposal from a
team led by Les
Klein of Toronto’s Quadrangle Architects, with lead design by landscape
architect Jeff Craft of SWA
Group. It includes an 11-metre-high granite form that transitions from
black to grey granite and then to white limestone; another stone form that
carries a small birch forest; and two art installations: a multi-channel video by Israeli
artist YaelBertana that will include objects linked to Jewish
life before the war and an audio installation by the Scottish artist Susan Philipsz.
A jury will recommend one of the shortlisted designs, and a announcement of
the winner and groundbreaking are planned for this summer.
