Theoretical project

An alternative memorial that functions as a mnemonic device that “activates” its visitor/reader..
Landscape is created in the memorial as a complex signifier. Digging into the site, generating growth of a forest – meaning is generated by the different interpretations one projects upon these landscapes. The physical and emotional experience of the memorial is aimed at evoking a simultaneity of possible interpretations, different and even contradictory.
The burden of interpretation lies with the individual.
The memorial defies its allotted boundaries and spills over into the reconstructed and formal Pariser Platz. It also recalls the boundary line of the Berlin wall which has since been blurred and erased/ obliterated.
Entering from Pariser Platz the memorial removes the visitor from the public space of the city. Initially the experience is aimed at the individual, who must constantly choose his path through the memorial. Time offers an additional layer of meaning- a ritual of planting oak trees that will gradually encroach upon the entire memorial space.

Vardit Tsurnamal, MLA Studio Project, Harvard, 1999 Studio instructor: Prof. Wilfried Wang