22 Concrete Sculptures Shortlisted For Holocaust Memorial Architecture Competition

May 19, 2014, 9:00pm

In no lesser measure of scale and spectacle than this star-shaped submission, by design team comprised of co-collaborators Daniel Libeskind and Edward Burtynsky, which took first prize in the national architecture competition to design Canada's first Holocaust Monument Museum, runner-up co-architects David Adjaye and Ron Arad have released their shortlisted proposal, an array of 22 sculpted concrete pathways.

Teaming up for their proposal with curator and historian Irene Szylinger, Adjaye and Arad's second-placed structure speaks to the singular horrors thrust upon the collectives of victims of the nearly five-year genocide. Although, ultimately, Libeskind and Burtynsky's proposal is expected to be inagurated come autumn 2015, Adjaye and Arad's sculpture made a formidable opponent in the quest to commemorate the Holocaust in Ottawa, Canada's capital city.

From David Adjaye and Ron Arad's proposal:

There are 23 concrete foils in total, facilitating 22 pathways – one for each country in which Jewish communities were decimated during the Holocaust. Their combined impact is an interplay between robustness and frailty, cohesiveness and fragmentation; like pages in a book, or individual members in a tightknit community. […]

The higher reaches of these foils are individually articulated through dramatic folds and impressions to create an undulating, and at times frayed appearance. These are redolent of the imprints, or scars which events may leave in their wake – the tracery of damage which is both testament to history, and a mark carried into the future. […]

"The passage in-between the foils, recalls a key biblical reference – the Covenant of the Pieces: a pivotal event which symbolises God's bond with the Patriarch Abraham and his descendants, and the promise of deliverance following long-endured hardships. The Covenant was sealed by a column of smoke and fire which travelled in-between an array of sacrificed animal pieces, searing them in the process. This also resonates with the Latin meaning of the word Holocaust (Holocaustum): 'burnt offering' or 'a sacrifice completely consumed by fire.'"

Below, more images of the poignant, passed-over project: