Urban Place-Making and the Shed Redux: The Museum for the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw

摘要

As the last Holocaust survivors near the end of their lives, the world is still engaged with the commemoration of one of the most tragic events in our history. The appearance of numerous memorials and museums, not just in Europe, but throughout the world, attests to the role architects have played in this process. In the competition for a Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw we encounter architecture in the service of atonement, but also recognition and celebration. The winning entry rejects the recent taste for self-referential bombastic object-making and returns to a dignified, eloquent narration of architecture that creates a meaningful place for the Memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.