bda_013_Shoah Memorial in Bologna | bottega d'architetti

The darkness of reason can be produced as much as revealed by the word.
The written word, and the oral word, Torah shebehalpeh, that during the exodus Moses received
on Mount Sinai.
The word: primeval element to convey God’s law and the memory to mankind.
Our project in occasion of the “Memorial of the Shoah” in Bologna, originates from the word
and puts the words as primary element. Words that condense an uncomfortable admission:
“how many of us pass over without a glance.” A sentence, sized 16 m x 2 m, which attracts
the attention of anyone passing by quickly and becomes a source of concern.
Visible from the distance, those words are cutted on micro-perforated iron plates that design
a great septum, empty inside and accessible, which, just by not imposing itself on the existing
space, leads to look for an intimate farther space of meditation.
The word and the Memorial are the same thing, and that place us all on the same condition,
just in front of ourselves. It becomes a threshold, a passage to move men and memory over
the convulsions of the present days. This happens also thanks to the physical crossing of the
word which, into the septum, the faint glow of little lightsbulbs and the micro-perforated
holes,z guides us towards the exit and the light. And here appears the second formal element,
a triangular garden where to stop, take time and meditate. A “green nursery” for six trees
(punica granatum (pomegranate), magnolia stellata, prunus subhirtella pendula), which
will be “exported” in other places and gardens of the city as “memory seed”.
The symbols of the Memorial are completed by a blackboard panel, three metres high, placed
for its full length on the “garden side” of the septum. A surface on which are engraved
stories about deportations and trains as well as a panel that could be used by anyone visiting
the site, feels the need to add more words or stories to the existing ones.
In a place where many people passed through and never returned, the garden overlooking the
station establishes a new responsible relationship between men and the city and remembers
the intimate link between rails and deportations in Europe.