The Reminiscing Magical Wood
The place, where the Holocaust Memorial of Bologna will be located, is a real crossroads of different streams: on one side there is the railway that frames the area, forcing it to engage with its world made of iron, cables and electrical lattices; on the other side the road, that ,with its usual strong presence, dictates its artificial nature made of asphalt, movements and noise. The city as an impetuous built mass: an urban backdrop perceived as the scenario of this linear and dynamic system of infrastructures.
This square raised on a plinth expresses its own specific "solitude" highlighted by the condition of being elevated and isolated from the life of the city. This state, although temporary, will remain to some extent as the generative soul of the place despite the bike path and the new station entrance.
The condition just explained, interiorized and meant as an abstract fertile ground where the project is able to arise, makes the place ideal to host this Holocaust Memorial; this conceptual framework becomes functional to emphasize our argument: the memory is of course understood as a perpetual reminder of the past horrors, but more than being only a fundamental defense to possible, future, barbarism, could be enhanced and conceived as a new creative tool through the juxtaposition with life. The dramatic and abstract reading of the metal masses observed from the city and the railway - once closer experienced - reveals then a quiet and repaired place, a "reminiscing magical wood", a cosy shelter to sit and reflect under the subtle shadow of the "Memorial". Life could then be integrated in an emblematic way, assimilating and making more accessible the concept of memory through the possibility of inhabiting the shapes that constitute the Memorial itself. The visit gains therefore an experiential side: reminiscing becomes a familiar concept, meant to sediment forever in the soul.The "trees" of wood are made of perforated aluminum, allowing the users to climb the hollow intersected volumes, soaring from the shadow of the “undergrowth” to the colorful light of the space between the “branches”. A space mold with soft curves and leant toward the sky, whose privileged understanding and discovery would be through the eyes of a child.
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We want to dedicate this space indeed to the children, to those who are able to transform the memory and its consequences into an active instrument; those who pursue the development and diffusion of the universal concept of respect in the most coherent and effective way.
