Los Angeles Holocaust Museum. Photos: Belzberg Architects.
See more photos here.

USA: In Los Angeles, a New (and another) Holocaust Museum Opens

The Jewish journal.com reports that a new Holocaust museum will open in Los Angeles next week. While many people assume that the Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance serves as LA's memorial center for Shoah victims and educational center for Shoah victims, that is not really proved to be the case. The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust which traces its origins to 1961, really fills that role. It now finally has a permanent and notable home, designed by Hagy Belzberg and Belzberg Architects, a small (12) firm of unconventional designers committed to green design. Belzberg and the musuem already won the Design Concept Award from the 38th Annual Los Angeles Architectural Awards (2008). Belzberg is also the architect of the Southern California Center for Jewish Life now in the planning and fund raising stage in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Holocaust museums: L.A. and the rest of the world
by Jonah Lowenfeld

Next weekend, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust publicly opens the plate-glass doors of its brand-new home at the northwest corner of Pan Pacific Park for the first time. Observant visitors might be drawn to the building’s grass-covered roof, or the retro-futuristic shape of the windows, or the repeated use of triangles in a design that seems to nod to the six three-sided black pillars of the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument that sit just outside the museum.

Indeed, L.A.-based architect Hagy Belzberg’s design for the new museum does not look like many other buildings in Los Angeles. Belzberg’s design performs an admirable artistic and political feat: It has nestled a small museum inside a popular and much-utilized public park without raising many hackles among neighborhood residents. And the result is a handsome new home for the collections, with an unbeatable address.

Belzberg’s building doesn’t look much like other Holocaust museums, either. Over the past 20 years, cities around the world have erected structures that attempt to preserve and disseminate Holocaust memory through designs by some of the world’s most prominent architects. Each of these Holocaust museums and memorials bears the unique imprint of its architect, while responding to all the usual architectural challenges — relating to the site, budget and local politics, among others. And Belzberg’s museum is no exception. To best understand the new museum, though, it helps to be familiar with a few of its most influential predecessors.

Read the entire article here.

Poland: New Memorial with Old Gravestones Erected at Radom Jewish Cemetery

Radom, Poland. New Memorial at Jewish Cemetery. Photos courtesy of FODZ.

Poland: New Memorial with Old Gravestones Erected at Radom Jewish Cemetery

(ISJM) The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland has announced the upcoming dedication of a new memorial monument at the Jewish cemetery at the central Polish town of Radom. The monument, erected on the cemetery is a raised lapidarium incorporating many of the gravestones scattered on the site and found in other locations. The ceremonial unveiling is planned for November 8, 2010.

The memorial is being built within the framework of the "Tikkun - Repair" project, created by the Polish and Israeli Prison Service with the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland as a partner.

The monument continues a tradition of "gathering of stones" begun with the erection of cemetery memorials by survivors immediately after the Shoah, and then continued in the 1980s and 1990s at places such as Kazimierz Dolny and Wyszków.

USA: Allison Hoffman on Moshe Safdie and the Institute of Peace on the Washington Mall

USA: Allison Hoffman on Moshe Safdie and the Institute of Peace on the Washington Mall

Allison Hoffman has written a fine article about the Israel-born and Canada-raised architect Moshe Safdie, his new project on the mall in Washington, and the difficulties of architecture in Israel today. I'm quoted, though I am no Safdie expert. Safdie is known for many dramatic (and some now iconic) exterior sculptural building forms. He certainly does have a talent for creative shaping of built form. However, as the new United States Institute of Peace seems (I have not seen it yet) to demonstrate, his other skills are about responding to context - when he must do so - and turning his eye inward.

Master Builder

With his U.S. Institute for Peace set to open in Washington, Israeli-born Moshe Safdie takes his place among the world’s leading architects

By Allison Hoffman

When tourists visit Israel, they are, more often than not, following an itinerary designed by the architect Moshe Safdie. From the grand sloping entrance hall at Ben Gurion airport—lined in golden limestone—to the sweeping vistas at Yad Vashem or the tony shops and cafes in the new Mamilla mall just outside the Old City of Jerusalem, Safdie has been singularly responsible for shaping his native country’s modern landmarks. In Canada, where he lived as a teenager, Safdie is famous as the designer of Habitat, a beehive-like housing complex in Montreal that landed him on the cover of Newsweek in 1971—and, with his shock of white hair and bushy mustache, remains so easily recognizable that customs officers sometimes greet him by name. But in the United States, where Safdie has made his home and career for the past three decades, he remains almost unknown, overshadowed by superstars like Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, and Richard Meier.

Now, though, Safdie is going where his competitors have not: the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where construction is nearly complete on the $186 million headquarters Safdie designed for the United States Institute of Peace. The building, which is next door to the State Department, anchors the far western end of Constitution Avenue opposite the Lincoln Memorial—an unusually prominent site, carved out of a former Navy parking lot, that finally gives Safdie a unique opportunity to leave his mark at the symbolic center of his adopted country. “I have three passports and three citizenships, and feel very much part of all three places,” Safdie said. “But it’s evolved so that the architect of the peace institute is an Israeli. That tickles me nicely.”

Read the entire article here.

Conference: "Jews & the American City: Planning, Developing, and Imagining Urban Space and Jewish Space,"

Conference: "Jews & the American City: Planning, Developing, and Imagining Urban Space and Jewish Space," Temple University, November 11, 2010

New York, NY. The former Froward Building,one of the first "Jewish" skyscrapers.

Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2005.

In the past half century American Jewish planners, architects and real estate developers have helped to transform American cities - often far outside traditional "Jewish space." A conference in Philadelphia addresses the causes, effects and significance of the Jewish contribution - or should it just be the "contribution by individual Jews" - to the modern American urbanism.

Conference Announcement:
Jews & the American City: Planning, Developing, and Imagining Urban Space and Jewish Space
Sponsored by Temple University's Feinstein Center for American Jewish History

Thursday, November 11, 2010
Edward H. Rosen Hillel Center, Temple University

An all day conference sponsored by Temple University's Feinstein Center for American Jewish History, the History Department at Temple University, the Center for Humanities at Temple, and the Foundation for Jewish Culture will explore the relationship between Jews and American urbanism. What role have Jews and Jewish ideals played in the redevelopment of urban space, especially over the last three decades? Practitioners in and scholars of the fields of urban development, urban planning and architecture, and urban politics will consider how we can understand American cityscapes in light of Jews' investment in the creation, destruction and re-creation of urban spaces and ideals. Among the individuals joining us in this discussion are Lizabeth Cohen, Deborah Dash Moore, Robert Fishman, Paul Levy, Max Page, Wendell Pritchett, Inga Saffron, and Tom Sugrue. A full program and information about attending the conference is available at http://www.temple.edu/feinsteinctr/.