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London / Buenos Aires / Caracas
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SELECTED
ARCHITECTURE
URBAN
ART
PUBLICATIONS
ACADEMIC
ABOUT
WW2 Memorial Park
International Competition
Kyiv, Ukraine, 2016
Babyn Yar — Dorohozhychi Necropolis Memorial Park is a site marked by the successive violence of history. Among its many layers of tragedy, the massacre of September 1941 remains one of the most devastating events associated with the territory.
The proposal reinterprets the site through the lens of memory, human rights and the rights of nature, recognising both the suffering inflicted upon bodies and the violence imposed upon the land. After decades of concealment, erasure and indifference, the project approaches the territory as a crime scene, a necropolis and a landscape of collective mourning.
The design is structured through three fundamental decisions. First, the limits of the area are consolidated through a perimeter park, acknowledging the site as a protected field of memory. Second, fifteen open promenades are introduced as exhibition spaces, extending remembrance across the entire territory. Third, a solemn space of remembrance is created to offer silence, dignity and condolences to the victims.
Rather than proposing a single monument, the project works with the landscape itself: paths, edges, clearings and pauses become instruments of memory. The memorial park is conceived as a place where history is not isolated, but carried through the act of walking, gathering and remembering.
Client: Kyiv Municipality
Endorsed by: International Union of Architects — UIA
Program: WW2 memorial park
Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Design: Rodrigo Grassi, Leandro Crook and Karla Montauti, Asnnoise
Design Advisors: Pablo Pschepiurca, Pío Torroja and Tito Varas
Team assistance: María José San Román, Matilde Hermann, Lucía Ayerbe Rant and Delfina Ferreiro
Video: Zapata Films