Melbourne Holocaust Museum

Architecture’s role in a museum about The Holocaust is fraught. While many overseas examples have attempted to use architecture to somehow render the horrors of The Holocaust in figurative or associative ways, this design for the Melbourne Holocaust Museum (MHM) avoided this approach because it risked trivializing rather than enabling an understanding of the history and memory of trauma. Instead, a decidedly abstract architecture was adopted that recognises that for many The Holocaust remains outside of representation. MHM is a cultural repository and it is the content – the artefacts, museum programs and its people particularly the survivors and their families- best placed to attempt to speak of the unspeakable. The façade reinforces MHM’s role as cultural repository by integrating the heritage building within it and treating it as an important artefact that holds the origin of the museum. And rather than act as a bunker, another common trope in recent Holocaust Museums, the MHM is visually and physically connected to the community and the street through its façade and interior. The facade is variegated through a combination of clay and solid glass bricks, calibrated according to light sensitivity and the nature of internal activities and spaces it encloses. Views into and out of the building are enabled to and from less light sensitive zones such as administration and classrooms, and withheld from gallery and museum spaces. The visually most open parts, formed by glass bricks in a hit and miss formation, are adjacent to the elevated memorial garden and central public circulation spine that encompasses the stairs and breakout areas designed to provide some relief for visitors more strongly affected by the difficult museum content. Here views out of the MHM via windows and skylights aided by mirrors reflect the sky, clouds, rooftops - the local context – to bring visitors back to contemporary Melbourne from the difficult worlds and histories they have encountered through the museum. The program dispersed over 5 levels includes auditoriums, research and learning spaces, administration, archives, galleries and a series of memorial spaces – gardens, terraces and light shafts; for individual and collective reflection. Internal spaces are reserved and luminous, fostering education and understanding, this is a community facility to be shared and experienced. Why glass bricks? The November Program of 1938 became known as Kristallnacht, “night of broken glass”, where the fragility of glazed facades became synonymous with the pogram itself. The incorporation of significant glazed areas in the façade of the MHM indexes the relative freedom to express cultural identity in Melbourne in 2023, while balancing the security demands for a resilient building envelope. Light was a central driver for the architecture of the MHM. Light is linked to illumination, illumination to knowledge, and given that education is central to the purpose of MHM then it seemed appropriate to deploy light as a motif and in creating welcoming, functional spaces especially for the education, research and event spaces.