Besoljem Memorial Park Lviv | awarded project

Lviv, Ukraine

Add To Collection

Besoljem Memorial Park Lviv | awarded project

Lviv, Ukraine

Firm

Type

Cultural › Memorial
Landscape + Planning › Public Park Cemetery

YEAR

2010

International Competition for the Sites of Jewish History in Lviv, third prizeA Jewish Cemetery in Germanyon a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery,a jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs,abandoned and forgotten. neither the sound of prayernor the voice of lamentation is heard therefor the dead praise not the lord.only the voices of our children ring out, seeking graves and cheeringeach time they find one--like mushrooms in the forest, like wild strawberries.here's another grave! there's the name of my mother'smothers, and a name from the last century. and here's a name,and there! and as i was about to brush the moss from the name--look! an open hand engraved on the tombstone, the grave of a kohen,his fingers splayed in a spasm of holiness and blessing,and here's a grave concealed by a thicket of berriesthat has to be brushed aside like a shock of hairfrom the face of a beautiful beloved woman.Yehuda AmichaiBesojlem - The House of EternityA long drawn out rectangle opposes itself to the floating form of the lot and refers itself to the horizontal lines of the hospital building. Its slight distortion underlines the significant earth movement of the site and its surroundings, forming an ideal continuity to the green hill alongside Zolota and Yaroslava Pstraka street.The invisible and the visible become the main structural features of the memorial park. Three axes cut the green space into many fragments and symbolise three of the most important realities in Jewish history in Lviv, forming a matrix of invisible connections: to the Great City Synagogue, to the Yanivsky Camp and to the Golden Rose Synagogue.The middle axis, directing versus Yanivsky Camp, opposes itself to the axes pointing to the two synagogues, which enlarge themselves slightly; hopelessness and death as a counterpoint to a vital cultural and ritual life.A triangle of weathering steel slabs connects the three axes. Each slab contains blanking spaces, letters of names, remembering those, who once were buried on the grounds of the Jewish Cemetery. Inclined in many different directions in order to recall the period of Nazi destruction, they contrast the eighteen still existing headstones, aligned along the park paths, standing straight.Long stretched corten steel blades offer flexible sitting possibilities as well as a concealed, subtle park lighting and rise up to a minimal building structure, which incorporates the transmission substation. They optically separate the recreational green spaces adjacent to the hospital, where new life begins, from the memorial headstones. In this way, the direct view is “filtered“, leaving room to conjecture and guesses."...and here's a grave concealed by a thicket of berriesthat has to be brushed aside like a shock of hairfrom the face of a beautiful beloved woman."