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Abdulrahman. F. H
A) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum :
In designing the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the late architect James Ingo Freed, of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, visited a number of historical Holocaust sites, including several camps and ghettos, to examine their structures and materials. The Museum he built as a result is not a neutral shell. Instead, the architecture—through a collection of abstract forms both invented and drawn from memory—alludes to the history the Museum addresses.
These allusions are not specific. Freed wanted visitors to experience the Museum building “viscerally,” to make their own interpretations, with the building’s subtle symbols and metaphors serving as vehicles for thought and introspection.
“There are no literal references to particular places or occurrences from the historic event,” he explained. “Instead, the architectural form is open-ended so the Museum becomes a resonator of memory.”
Just as the Holocaust defies understanding, the building is not meant to be understood intellectually. Its architecture of sensibility is intended to engage the visitor and stir emotions. “It must take you in its grip,” Freed said.
A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity. Federal support guarantees the Museum’s permanent place on the National Mall, and its far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by generous donors.
Located among our national monuments to freedom on the National Mall, the Museum provides a powerful lesson in the fragility of freedom, the myth of progress, and the need for vigilance in preserving democratic values. With unique power and authenticity, the Museum teaches millions of people each year about the dangers of unchecked hatred and the need to prevent genocide. And we encourage them to act, cultivating a sense of moral responsibility among our citizens so that they will respond to the monumental challenges that confront our world.
Today we face an alarming rise in Holocaust denial and antisemitism—even in the very lands where the Holocaust happened—as well as genocide and threats of genocide in other parts of the world. This is occurring just as we approach a time when Holocaust survivors and other eyewitnesses will no longer be alive.
B) Rotonda House:
In the postscript to his book, Mario Botta says: “Writing about architecture, seeing the ideas into print, calls for a reversal of accustomed attitudes. Speaking about architecture or a building really means breaking up the individual phases of the design through which the scheme was put together. Making architecture means constructing a design in a series of phases. I am rather embarrassed when I see the pictorial contents compiled here to illustrate the construction of the Casa Rotonda. Probably this is caused by precisely that process of reversal.
A single-family house on the edge of a village, the situation governed by building regulations; the land-use plan for the village round the historic core; the network of footpaths that develop into transport routes; the pattern of the fields and vineyards, designated as building land. In this context, I was requested to design a single-family house on a small site at the northern tip of a new residential area. I conceived a building with a circular plan; and along the north-south axis, I set a shaft through which light could enter from above. A building structure on three levels, a kind of tower; or rather, an object carved out of itself. The intention was to avoid any comparison – and any contrast – with the neighbouring developments, creating instead a spatial link with the distant landscape and the horizon.
C) Morbio Secondary School , Mario Botta :
