National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah (MEIS)

A museum is a place of the city

MEIS’s project has presented us with a place or landscape that is understood in the broadest sense of the terms as both complex and heterogeneous.

It is a museum, but also a place of memory, part of the city, of conscience and of the collective consciousness: a historical monument. It is also a project of multifarious landscapes and assorted natures, such as the urban scenario around the harbour and the area stretching from there to the south west of Estense Castle, the ex prison, now a suspended and interrupted place, and the inescapable relationship between the city of Ferrara and the Hebrew culture. In other words, a landscape through which memories run and intertwine in a highly articulated manner; a combination of marks and signs, both physical and intangible, ordered and given meaning through the architectural project.

It is a project that draws heavily on pre-existing buildings, contributing to the natural stratification of tracks, signs and sediments that has always been a part of the natural evolution of Italian cities.
And this is not by chance: a courageous choice by the competition commission has permitted us to work in a substantial manner on a historical pre-existence, creating the fundamental hybridization that is the pursuit of evolution in every architecture.