Blurriness of Seeing
Lyon Holocaust Memorial
Lyon, France
Competition by Resistance and Deportation History Center
In collarboration with Roy Schneid, Maggie McCutcheon
The proposed Holocaust memorial at Perrache Train Station, a site of forced departure, utilizes the language of linearity to create irregular and intersecting boxes that form an experiential pathway, prompting reflection on the act of departure, the act of ignorance, and the act of resistance.
The memorial consists of six boxes that intersect each other along a grid system. By collapsing one edge of each box, and by the intersection of other boxes, the rectangles are altered to distorted yet functioning shapes. Each box, referencing a train car, is formed by horizontal slats to symbolize the site’s railroad tracks. The entire design is raised to create a sentiment of heaviness. The reliance among the boxes for stability reflects survival, if only by just enough.
The circulation within the memorial is crucial to the design and is activated by the pedestrian flow of the area. As visitors walk through the memorial, forms of passing pedestrians are blurred through the gaps in the slats with only the feet purely visible, alluding to the marching boots of soldiers, the Death Marches, or the unbothered bystanders. Ultimately, this design element performs the effect of ignorance or resistance.
An alcove created on the exterior of the memorial enables pedagogical activity and a space of rest.
Light emerges from 6,100 openings that line the structure’s wall slats, memorializing the 6,100 Jewish people who hailed from the area of Lyon and were murdered in the Holocaust. In their memory, light remains.
Urban Context
Place Carnot, Lyon, France
Process Diagrams
Plan +2.00
Details
Blurred pedestrians as seen from within the memorial
Gathering space
Light emerges from 6,100 openings to memorialize the 6,100 Jewish people who hailed from the area of Lyon and were murdered in the Holocaust
North Entrance