British architecture team Adjaye Associates and Ron Arad Architects have been selected as designers of the new national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in Westminster.
The winning entry – which also includes the landscape architects Gustafson Porter + Bowman – was the unanimous choice of a judging panel which included Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Holocaust survivor Ben Helfgott.
The result of the UK Holocaust Memorial International Design Competition was announced on Tuesday after the jury picked its favoured design from ten finalists, selected from 92 original entries.
The panel praised the winning team’s proposal to create “a living place, not just a monument to something of the past” and the desire to create an immersive journey for the visitor who would enter a memorial embedded in the land.
The chosen design concept features 23 tall bronze fins – with the spaces in between representing the 22 countries in which Jewish communities were destroyed during the Shoah.
Mirvis said of the winning design: “The question of how we will memorialise the Holocaust in the years to come, in a society which will no longer be able to rely on first-hand testimony of survivors, is one that should occupy the mind of every one of us.
“Today, the British nation has taken an important and historic step in offering our answer to that question.
Located next to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, the new memorial will honour the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust along with the other victims of Nazi persecution, including Roma, homosexual and disabled people.
Sir David Adjaye, who will lead the design team, is known for creating sensitive yet compelling designs.
His recent work includes the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC and the Idea Stores in London’s Tower Hamlets.
Subject to the planning process, the memorial and learning centre are due for completion by 2021.
