42 Hectare

Daniel Libeskind was given an honorable mention for proposing to render the site inaccessible. As with his Memory Machine, what is truly extraordinary is not the proposal itself but the effort required in its making. Half of the 42 hectares was to be excavated and flooded with water.

The void was intended to contradict erasure of the events which took place on the site from WII onward. For Libeskind the void is a way to etch the events permanently onto (in this case, actually into) the site.

Subsequently Libeskind successfully lobbied to have the competition results overturned in his favor. The grounds for overturning the jury decision were voiced by Alan Balfour who characterized Czech’s entry as proposing to “erase the past by covering over the unacceptable relics of National Socialism with innocuous activities.” Balfour seems to have forgotten that one of the most disturbing aspects of genocide is that it is often perpetrated amongst seemingly innocuous activities.

“To the extent that we encourage monuments to do our memory-work for us, we become that much more forgetful.”

—Professor James E. Young, Critical Inquiry Winter 1992.

In 2001, eight years later, Libeskind and Matthias Reese proposed a new scheme using two-thirds of the site called the Geography of Terror. Instead of the former competition program of housing, the site would be developed with contem-plative landscapes and new buildings for youth, education, and human rights organizations.

Of this last scheme, Professor Young wrote,

“Whatever we do with Oranienburg we are ‘reusing’ it. Once the killing stopped only the buildings remained and they, alone, do not tell us the truth.”

—Professor James E. Young, Architecture Review May 2001.