The Living Museum
at Babyn Yar
Professional Work
Project Credit: Watson Salembier / Julia Watson
Year: 2021
Location: Babyn Yar Ravine, Kiev. Ukraine
Rol: Designer involved in the research and in charge of all graphic representation.
Client: Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center
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The design of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC) reimagines the memorial as a living system, where the symbiosis between burial and rebirth is made tangible through the integration of sacred landscapes and living forests.
Informed by the evolution of memorial design from representational to abstract, the concept of the living memorial emerges—a space that transcends static commemoration, merging utility with memory. Our vision extends beyond this by amplifying the stories of the land itself, reigniting its historical narrative through sensory experience.
This approach interlaces a millennium of history into the present and future, where the sacred ground becomes a dynamic, evolving site for both formal and informal rituals of remembrance.
ContextIn Ukraine, the Holocaust was not so much characterized by architectural devices, but rather by the landscape itself.
The site rests on historic burial grounds—both formal and informal—of the Babyn Yar, a deep ravine that has been home to different peoples for millennia. Its landscape is strikingly diverse, each element contains layers of time, memory, and conflict.
This landscape was not only transformed but also used as an instrument of violence, becoming both a weapon and a tool for erasure.
Initially, an architectural competition was put in place to design a memorial on a site defined by the Baby Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. However, the foundation recognized this approach did not honor the gravity and historical significance of the territory. Defying the understanding of memorials as buildings, the foundation expanded its vision of the site (7 hectares), conceptualizing the entire park (132 hectares) as a living memorial, with acupunctural interventions woven into the land, respecting the weight of its history and the ongoing process of remembrance through space.
“[Memorials are] a symbolic ordering of space and time providing a framework for experience, through which we learn who or what
we are in society.”
David Harvey
An aerial photograph of the Babi Yar ravine taken by the German air force 1943
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
Design IntentThe language we propose to use to inform the design of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC) is one of burial and birth (rebirth, life), made manifest through the strategic design of sacred landscapes overlayed with living forest systems. As designers and as viewers, we understand memorials through their content and symbolism, both of which must be easily understood by the memorial’s community. The way a memorial is viewed depends upon its audience’s familiarity with its visual lexicon of signs and images that translate into meaning. As communities change, shared language also changes, even sometimes becoming extinct.
A living memorial is by definition how we envision the future for the BHYMC, however, we envision a sensory experience that is exceedingly more powerful that amplifies the latent power of the landscape by reigniting the narrative of the soil in a resacralization of the ravine. The landscape of BYHMC will be evaluated and curated through five (5) approaches to the design of this sacred landscape. The production of these approaches amplifies the sacredness of the site. They operate at various scales and often overlap; Interpreting Space, Ritualizing Space, Contesting Space, Orienting Space, and Regenerating Space.
“Soil is a special natural-historic body.”
Vasily Dokuchaev,founder of “Soil Science”
Approaches to Sacred Space
1. Interpreting Sacred Space
2. Ritualizing Sacred Space
3. Contesting Sacred Space
4. Orienting Sacred Space
5. Regenerating Sacred Space