On 6 September 2019, the jury of the international architectural competition selected the best architectural design project for the future Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. The winning project is authored by the Austrian bureau – Querkraft Architekten with the landscape architect Kieran Fraser Landscape Design (Austria). The majority of the jury supported the winner. Based on their proposed design project, the first Holocaust tragedy Memorial Center in Eastern Europe located at the site where the tragic events took place in 1941-1943 will be developed in Kyiv.
The competition’s goal was to come up with a global scale design solution that would allow for the creation of a next-generation memorial. The future Holocaust Memorial Center will become a place of memory, a museum and a platform for research, public dialog and reflection on the tragedy, all combined in one. It will comprise exhibition spaces for core and changing exhibits, an education and a research center, a space for public events, and premises for the archive and the museum collection. The project will integrate the Babyn Yar landscape and the memorial park with an outstanding design and a unique visiting experience.
The concept of the winning project is built around the Center visitors’ individual perception. The design solution enables the visitor to physically feel the danger and hopelessness that surrounded the Holocaust victims during those tragic events. A long ramp resembling a cleft leads to the core exhibition located 20 meters below the ground level. The walls of the ramp ultimately fold over the visitor. This is an analogy with, on the one hand, the path of the Babyn Yar victims towards the place of their death, and on the other hand, with society’s initially invisible, yet incessant plunging in the darkness of violence. After going through the core exhibition, the visitor finds him- or herself back in a luminous space. This democratic space is the Memorial Center’s “heart”, and it symbolizes the future, which gives hope. It is around this space that are located premises for dialogue, research and public events. The design solution is built upon the contrast between these spaces of dark and light.
The architectural competition for the best project of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre was launched on 19 December 2018. It was organised by German firm [phase eins., which had also conducted the competition for the best projects for the Heaven’s Hundred Memorial and the Museum of the Revolution of Dignity.
Initially, 165 applications were submitted from 36 countries. Renowned design bureaus were among the applicants, such as Eisenman Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (US), Zaha Hadid Architects (UK). For example, Eisenman Architects designed the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Berlin. 10 bureaus were selected in the pre-qualification procedure.
The competition was held in two phases. The procedure was based on UNESCO standards for architectural competitions and the rules of the international Union of Architects. The jury evaluated the project under the condition of anonymity and along specified criteria.
The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC) is a non-profit educational organization aiming at due commemoration of the Babyn Yar tragedy victims through building an innovative memorial center in Kyiv and promoting the humanizing of mankind through the preservation and exploration of the memory of the Holocaust.
The Memorial Center is a reliable partner of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine. The Center’s Supervisory Board includes Yaakov Dov Bleich, a member of the JCU Presidency, and the public council includes Inna Ioffe, JCU Executive Director.
