Bologna Shoah Memorial

The Bologna Holocaust Memorial stems from the will of the Jewish Community of Bologna to donate a new symbolic place to the city; a work that in addition to evoking the memory of an extermination, leads the visitor to perceive the space in an empathic way.

The Memorial is placed at the center of the existing square as a sculptural and massive object with its 10 meters of height and width. Externally it looks like a full and compact volume, while at the inside is emptied; the Cor-Ten steel interlocked plates form a grid that, in an obsessive repetition, recalls the geometry of the beds of the concentration camp dorms.

The passage between the two blocks is characterized by a paving of gravel, typical of railway embankments (to remember the so-called "Judenrampe"); as it runs through it, it narrows, causing the visitor a state of estrangement that leads him to a personal and intimate reflection on the theme of the Holocaust.

Credits:

Client: Comunità Ebraica di Bologna

Type: Memorial

Site: Via Giacomo Matteotti / Via dè Carracci, Bologna Italy

Year: 2016

Project: SET Architects

Project team: Lorenzo Catena, Chiara Cucina, Onorato di Manno, Andrea Tanci

Structural engineering: Proges Engineering - Ing. Andrea Imbrenda

General Contractor: Sì Produzioni - Francesco Bernardi, Luigi Tortato

Metalworking: Officina Paolo Cocchi

Lighting: Erco

Photographs: Simone Bossi

Video: Visual lab

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