Holocaust Memorial

General view from Hannah-Arendt-Strasse, looking north; A memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineering firm Büro Happold. It consists of a 19,000 m2 (4.7-acre) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38 m (7 ft 10 in) long, 0.95 m (3 ft 1 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.8 m (7.9 in to 15 ft 9.0 in). According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. There were two separate competitions for the design. On June 25, 1999, a large majority of the Bundestag decided in favor of Eisenman's plan, modified by attaching an underground museum, or "place of information," designed by Berlin-based exhibition designer Dagmar von Wilcken; this holds names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem. The memorial was dedicated on May 10, 2005, as part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of V-E Day and opened to the public two days later. Source: Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (accessed 6/19/2014