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Ukraine's capital will be home to Eastern Europe's first Holocaust Memorial. Austrian studio Querkraft Architekten has won a design competition for Kiev's Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, which lies on sordid ground, the site where German forces took the lives of between 100,000 and 150,000 Jews, Romanis, Ukrainian Nationalists and Soviet prisoners of war in 1941.
Stark architectural elements—including an elongated ramp flanked by rising walls that leads to the sunken exhibition space—will allow visitors to experience the sense of hopelessness felt by the victims of the multiple massacres on the site. The venue will echo the path taken by those killed towards the Babyn Yar ravine, their ultimate place of death.
"The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center is a powerful and purposeful project. The significance and necessity to create a space reserved for understanding, educating and reflection will resonate amongst the generations to come, both in Ukraine and throughout the world," said Sir David Adjaye, member of the design competition's jury and Principal of Adjaye Associates.
A faint light at the end of the tunnel is revealed to be a luminous atrium at the centre of the complex, which will contain an education and research centre, a public events space, and archival spaces. Kieran Fraser Landscape Design will be responsible for the public realm outside the venue.
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