Boston, Massachusetts

The new museum and educational center for the Holocaust Legacy Foundation will support the organization's mission “to preserve and perpetuate the memory and lessons of the Holocaust for future generations.” On Boston’s Freedom Trail, the building is designed to be an instrument for teaching and engagement, with exhibits, classrooms, and a changing exhibit gallery dedicated to the history of the Nazi  attempt to exterminate Europe’s Jews and other populations, and how past hatred relates to contemporary life in America.

The main feature of the exterior is a gently undulating woven stainless-steel fabric that wraps the building’s mid-level exhibit floors. The fabric evokes the curtains that remained drawn in Jewish households at the time of the Nazi rise to power, and the fences that surrounded the death camps and kept Jewish prisoners enslaved. Above the entry, the curtain pulls back to reveal a large bay window containing an authentic railcar used for the deportation of the Jews to the extermination camps of the Third Reich. From the outside, museum visitors can be seen entering – but not leaving – the car.