Babi Yar Memorial Park Proposal
(Competition Runner Up)
Mizel Museum
Click on images for larger view
The Mizel
Museum Babi Yar Park Living Memorial is a parkland memorial with a powerful and
tragic message intended to convey the magnitude of personal loss resulting from
global terrorism, as seen against the backdrop of the Babi Yar Massacre.
The Babi Yar Park is a walking park, a choreographed
sequence of spatial, tactile and sensate experiences that are physical
metaphors and a path of empathy for the victims, survivors and rescuers of all
generations.
The project
consisted of six sites within the park, the centerpiece being the Northeast Hill Monument.
This geodesic, spherical matrix structure is built on an elevated berm of earth
with jagged-concrete-fissure entrances below, giving a claustrophobic and
oppressive feeling to the visitor. Covered with handprints, markings and
text of desperation, the entryway walls lead to an interior chamber that is
unforgiving and tomb-like with light flooding in from above. In the
center of this space is a cairn of stone made of many blocks, with the name of
a terrorist event inscribed on each. The visitor leaves by a winding spiral
ramp that gradually ascends into more and more light, space and air, providing
the relief of being a survivor.
