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Daniel Libeskind designs new exhibition at Auschwitz-Birkenau

2019-05-23T16:02:00-04:00

Daniel Libeskind, the architect famous for the Jewish Museum Berlin, has added another holocaust memorial project to European soil.

Rendering of 'Through the Lens of Faith,' by Daniel Libeskind

On July 1st, Libeskind will present a new temporary exhibition at Auschwitz-Birkenau, perhaps the most infamous concentration camp used during World War II. Titled 'Through the Lens of Faith,' Libeskind designed a corridor-like structure adjacent to Auschwitz's main gate, complete with portraits of Auschwitz survivors taken by photographer Caryl Englander. Photos of the survivors are accompanied by text descriptions of how faith was critical to their survival during their time in Auschwitz.

Rendering of 'Through the Lens of Faith,' by Daniel Libeskind

Libeskind's design for the exhibition is uncharacteristically restrained, allowing visitors to focus less on his design than on the portraits of the survivors and the stories they share in text.

The architecture of death: examining the gas chambers of Auschwitz

2016-06-15T13:02:00-04:00

On a recent afternoon, the historian Robert Jan van Pelt was standing in a quiet room at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, explaining the significance of an unassuming steel-mesh column that visitors to this sprawling survey of global design might walk right past. “This is one of the most deadly things so far created,” Mr. van Pelt said. And it was the handiwork, he noted, of an architect.

"The column — painted, like everything else in the room, a pristine white — is a reproduction of one of the eight chutes used to lower Zyklon B poison pellets into gas chambers at Auschwitz."

For more from the 2016 Venice Biennale, check out these links:

New York state of mind: Weekly News Round-Up for November 10, 2014

2014-11-17T14:53:00-05:00

Thursday, November 13:

Smithsonian hires BIG architecture group for $2 billion South Mall renovation plan: While approval is still pending, the large-scale renovation will include "two underground levels of visitor amenities" and could take up to twenty years to complete.

Lucas museum faces lawsuit from Friends of the Parks: The nonprofit advocacy group claims that cordoning off the Chicago waterfront for Lucas' museum violates the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing "equal protection and due process" for deciding what to do with land belonging to the state of Illinois.

Wednesday, November 12:

Two window washers trapped on scaffolding at 1 WTC: The two men were shortly rescued by firemen, after uneven ascending cables left them dangling at a 65-degree angle 827ft in the air.

The Courtyard House Plug-In: A House Within The House: People's Architecture Office created a modular interior set to install in Beijing's historic buildings, as a renovation alternative to demolition.

The Race to Save Archi...

Proposal for the future of Auschwitz-Birkenau

2014-11-11T14:51:00-05:00

When a well-intentioned Alabama teenager tweeted a smiling selfie taken at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she attracted a deluge of hatred and outrage from across the internet. Lambasted as disrespectful, insensitive and inappropriate, the selfie was later explained as a means of memorializing her visit to the camp for her father, who had passed away exactly a year prior to her visit. Her gesture was by no mean the first or last of its kind, and represents an inevitable schism in memorial politics – as traumas recede from lived-past into historical contexts, how should cultural inheritance be balanced against personal experience? And how can this balance be articulated in the memorial space?

Currently, Auschwitz-Birkenau is memorialized in a variety of ways, but the structures themselves are not being actively preserved. In 1947, the Polish government established a memorial to all victims, and opened an exhibition of prisoner paraphernalia at Birkenau in 1955. Auschwitz I, the original death ca...