Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner

With Simon Schama, Avner Shalev, Future\Pace, Local Projects, Samantha Heywood, David Bonnett Associates, Tillotson Design Associates and Whybrow

Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner concept illustration: a low sunken memorial structure in Victoria Tower Gardens beside the Buxton Memorial
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner concept render: an underground room with walls covered in Michal Rovner's signature motif of rows of tiny walking figures
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner concept illustration: aerial view of the gardens and memorial with the Thames and London Eye beyond
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner concept render: long cross-section of the below-ground memorial and Learning Centre beneath the gardens, against the London skyline
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner concept render: a child walking down a brick corridor towards faint silhouetted figures glowing in glass panels
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner concept render: an underground gallery with every wall covered in rows of tiny walking human figures
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner presentation board 1
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner presentation board 2
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner presentation board 3
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner presentation board 4
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner presentation board 5
Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner presentation board 6

With minimum disturbance to the park, a ramp descends into the earth. Evocative of train tracks that terminated in the camps or the brown brick lined corridors leading down to the gas chambers. This is the way to the Time Left Memorial.

Projected images of an endless procession of human figures resonate with exodus or a human text that seems to go on forever like the unspoken testimonies.

The surface of the Memorial is set in the landscape, a gently arched rusted steel plate on the cross axis of Victoria Tower, Buxton Memorial and St John’s Smith Square.

The ramp entrance is marked by a sculpture of Broken Books evoking the burning of millions of books started by the Nazis in 1933 with the words of Heinrich Heine “wherever they burn books they will in the end burn human beings”.

Marking the biggest break in the book of human history is also a reminder and a warning.

Norman Foster | Michal Rovner

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