Shoah Memorial Competition, Bologna
“Il y a depuis la petite enfance jusqu'à la tombe, au fond du coeur de tout être humain, quelque chose qui, malgré toute l'expérience des crimes commis, soufferts et observés, s'attend invinciblement à ce qu'on lui fasse du bien et non du mal. C'est cela avant toute chose qui est sacré en tout être humain.”
Simone Weil
La personne et le sacré - 1943
A dark shadow gets thick at the horizon. It goes down, floats a few meters above the ground, then it stretches touching the floor.
A mysterious object crossed by luminous beams, willing to represent a threat but also a summary of a story of hope and salvation.
It lays down between the two big walls, underlining the passage in the square. Underneath, a winding path leads to be at times overwhelmed, oppressed, hustled, pushed or urged, but at the end it opens, revealing a peaceful place, an oasis, a pause.
Memory weighs; when it tries to hover, something keeps it anchored to the ground. But memory also sings; as a big organ, its pipes allow to give voice to its great symphony. And light wraps it up, while seeping through it.
Still hope exists; as an oasis in the desert, longed for, wished, pursued at the end of the memory journey.
The path of remembrance is essential: a compulsory passage for getting to the oasis.
Plastic translation of these ideas has brought to the development of an architectural expedient, which stresses, on the horizontal plane, the existing passage between the two big walls covered with granite.
The volume is a kind of discomposed solid, crossed by blades of light and wind. It’s not a cover but a structure in which the atmospheric agents act freely, leaving no possibility of shelter.
In fact it is made by a square-based grid, to which several square-section tubes are hung.
The passage of light gets more intense where pipes become less frequent and at a certain point, suddenly interrupting the continuity of the grid, they leave room to something like a clearing hosting life. In the most rearward and intimate area in the square, the tree of life trembles in hope.
TECHNICAL DATA
- The installation discloses itself as a squared-based parallelepiped (14x14 m), 9 meters high, irregularly extruded from the lower surface;
- the parallelepiped is modeled starting from a David six-pointed star engraved on the lower side, facing the square paving;
- the main framework consists of a lattice of steel pillars and beams, on which a metal square-mesh grid is anchored;
- the volume is dismantled in a series of square-section hollow tubes (10x10 cm), spaced 20 cm from each other, hung on the metal grid;
- such tubes are made of fine wire mesh and have variable lengths;
- thanks to this solution, the structure is not subject to overloads, such those caused by rain or snow;
- close to a vertex of the parallelepiped an area of 4x4 meters is defined. In this area the tubes are removed;
- this entails the set up of a small court, where a square planter made from steel sheet is laid on the floor;
- inside the planter, an almond tree is planted;
- almond trees mark the beginning of spring blooming with their flowers on early February, to coincide with the Feast of the Trees of TU B'Shvat.