Steven Holl Architects, in collaboration with Marcela Steinbachová and SKUPINA Studio, have won first place in the international competition of the Terezín Ghetto Museum in Czech Republic.
Terezín was found in 1780 as a military fortress, but then served as a Jewish Ghetto during World War II where around 33 000 people died.
Nowadays Terezín Ghetto Museum honors individuals who have lost their lives with a new design that is set to serve as a memorial of hope and light.
The winning proposal, called “Tower of Light”, is chosen among 22 international teams and offers visitors an immersive experience of spectral light phenomena from daylight. The light is refracted into a spectrum of colors, resembling the “colors of humanity”, which also glow at night as a “beacon through the darkness”.
The Tower of Light is a hopeful new volume in the center of Terezín, towering above the surrounding buildings toward the sky.
The design includes a renovation of the existing museum, an exhibition space, new parks, green spaces surrounding the site, updated parking, and a new information center.
The project is a nod to “Moon Landscape,” a drawing made by Petr Ginz. Born in Prague on February 1, 1928, Ginz was deported to the Terezín concentration camp where he made this imaginative drawing of Earth from the moon. In 1944, Ginz was deported to Auschwitz and was gassed to death at the age of sixteen.
Picture – Courtesy of Obrazek.org (Michal Nohejl)