Architecture in the United States, Holocaust Memorial Museum
Introduction
The Holocaust Museum located in Washington DC is a significant memorial to millions of American citizens. This is as a vital mark of the people who perished during the period of Germany’s Nazi regime in the Second World War. It is commonly referable to the people as the USHMM. Within the museum, there are three most valuable pieces of architecture: the Museum’s Hall of Remembrance, the museum’s Hall of Witness and the museum’s Permanent Exhibition.
The Museum’s Hall of Remembrance
Memory, beyond all, describes the Museum’s Hall of Remembrance. Occupying the hexagonal structure interior overlooking Eisenhower Plaza, it is a solemn with easy spacing designed to accommodate individual reflections and public ceremonies. As significant, universal figure of remembrance and redefined life, (Figure 1) indicate the first place I sought to visit. It has six sides that symbolize the more than 6 million Jews whom the Nazis murdered within the Holocaust. It also symbolizes the Star of David, which happens to contain 6 points. The Hall of Remembrance has a height of exactly three stories. The Hall also contains a skylight which has 6 sides that can be panoramically viewed from the top. It is cracked and spattered with the use of natural fissures with red granite floor (Kamin pg 1). The person who designed the museum’s Hall of Remembrance is James Ingo Freed. He completed it in April 1993, when the Holocaust Museum opened to the American public to light memorial candles as a universal remembrance sign. This is applicable to many cultures indicating a renewed life.
Figure 1: The interior of the Holocaust museum’s Hall of Remembrance
Within the Hall of Remembrance, there is a rectangular black marble block, with an eternal flame atop it. There are no normal windows, but glass-covered silts which lie at the building’s four corners providing shafts of light.
The art of the Hall is architecture. Its art genre is minimalism, as it focuses majorly on basic geometric shapes including triangles and rectangles. The Hall symbolism focuses on the Jewish Holocaust period, even though James Ingo Freed designed it in recent times. The Museum Hall shows its chief characteristics by displaying them all over. For instance, its chief feature being number six shows in its skylight the number of edges on the hall’s walls.
James Ingo Freed fled Hitler’s Germany to go to the un-oppressed United States (Kamin pg 1). He designed the Holocaust museum, including its Hall of Remembrance, which attracted many of its visitors from the relatively happy turf of Washington DC to the place where the ashes of people darkened the sky. James Freed expressed that light was the only thing he knew could heal someone. Therefore, within the museum Hall, the six sides symbolized to its visitors the Star of David’s famous six points, or the Holocaust’s over six million victims (Kamin pg 1).
Before experiencing the Hall of Remembrance, I expected a hall with an intricate design and little more, however, my expectations were not valid as the Hall evoked strapping emotions. I liked the artwork, because its simplicity gives it a deeper impact than if it had paintings or photos of the Holocaust’s victims. The Hall also gave me hope. Going to the Hall made me appreciate works of art, as well as architecture, I had never thought that an architectural structure would move me so much.
The Museum’s Hall of Witness
The Museum’s Hall of Witness (Figure 2) is an immense gathering place, or atrium, four stories high structure. It attains its light from the above sky. The skylight is deliberately skewed and off center as a symbol of conveying an impression to visitors. Similarly, the stairs which lead to the second floor are by design not at perfect right angles to the atrium’s wall. There exists a gentle arch atop the atrium’s stairs, a perfect copy of another over the brick gatehouse’s doorway, through which the Nazi’strains went into Poland’s Birkenau death camp. There is a Bible inscription on a wall: “You are (all) my witnesses quoted from the book of Isaiah 43:10. James Ingo Freed designed this Hall of Witness completing it in April 1993, the same as the museum’s Hall of Remembrance.
Figure 2: The Museum’s Hall of Witness
The type of art of the Holocaust museum’s Hall of Witness is architecture. The genre of the art is explicit because it constitutes geometric figures making it easier to understand. For instance, the walls meet at an acute angle rather than the usual 90 degrees while the skylight appears bent. This expresses all the feeling that the artist may have wanted to impact on the people depending on the type of belief held by the subject. The museum’s Hall of Witness focuses on the Jewish holocaust time and it illustrates its characteristics through the shape of the hall. This brings the meaning of the bent components of the whole art, from the walls to the skylight.
To ensure that it speaks explicitly to the attendees of the museum, there is a quote from Isaiah, which says to the visitors that they are his witnesses. This helps in illustrating to people the kind of relationship that Jesus wants with His people. There is also a white wall on the opposite edge. Some people may see this as a mark of hope, while others may view it as a sort of reminder of the Jews’ deaths on snow during the Holocaust’s death marches (Kamin 1).
I liked the whole design of the artwork presented in the museum’s Hall of Witness because it was no different to the other good works that always made good use of symbolism in their artistic design. The accompaniment of symbolism has helped the designers to communicate directly to their subjects just by the first view of the structure. For instance, the artwork made me to picture the whole situation that the Jewish were going through in their days. Therefore, the artwork gives the whole museum its aesthetic value, as an individual is able to relate the past and the present through it.
The Permanent Exhibition
The Permanent Exhibition covers three floors of the Holocaust museum. It has three parts: the Nazi’s initial assault on the Jews, the Final Solution from the Nazis and the Last Chapter. James Ingo Freed designed this Permanent Exhibition, though the actual exhibitions within it belong to other artists as shown Figure 3. He completed the permanent exhibition in April 1993.
Figure 3: A railcar within the museum’s Permanent Exhibition
With the type of work being architecture, Freed presents the Permanent Exhibition in a basic form so that visitors may concentrate more on the actual exhibit for instance the railcar within Figure 3. The only distinguishing feature from the other architecture is the elevators, which make visitors feel like they are entering the Holocaust’s gas chambers. It focuses on the Jewish Holocaust period, though James Ingo Freed designed it recently. The Permanent Exhibition illustrates its chief characteristics by including hundreds of exhibits based on the Holocaust while it is basic in design.
The design of the interior spaces of the Permanent Exhibition suggests the relationship of the genocide technology with the assembly lines of the machine age (Handler 674). The elevators also remind me of one of gas chambers. The tour takes visitors relentlessly through the chief Holocaust events.
My expectations for the Permanent Exhibition to be an emotional area with historic and disturbing exhibits were correct. The architecture brought fresh the whole suffering of the Jewish in my mind hence I considered it as a perfect artistic design for a museum. Going to the Permanent Exhibition also fostered my love for arts and architecture, as I realized how moving and disturbing art pieces can be.
Conclusion
The Holocaust museum is a vital museum because it has been able to project what occurred in the present in such a way that the present people realize easily. The museum shows the extent to which human beings can go to becoming cruel to each other. All the things within the museum portray the horrors of that timeline. Everyone ought to visit the museum to know what the Jews went through. The field trip has taught me knowing our past actions may we is crucial in creating a more respectable future.
Works Cited
Kamin, Blair. “James Ingo Freed.” ChicagoTribune [Chicago] 18 December 2005, n. pag. Web. 23 Aug. 2012. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2005-12-18/news/0512180351_1_freed- holocaust-memorial-museum-pei
—. “Monument to Memory.”Chicagotribune [Chicago] 11 April 1993, n. pag.Web. 23 Aug. 2012. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-04-11/entertainment/9304110198_1_death- camps-holocaust-warsaw-ghetto/2
Handler, Richard. “Lessons from the Holocaust Museum.”American Anthropologist. 96.3 (1994): 674. Web. 23 Aug. 2012. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/682309?uid=3738336&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70 &uid=4&sid=21101164218477
