Overview
Physical space directs our experience and understanding of the information we take in within that space. Museums and Memorial Places, like any human-made space, must be designed with a certain level of utilitarian function so that participants understand how to navigate that space and draw information from it. Organization and functional detail within these spaces have a rhetorical effect on what visitors engage with. Elements like walkways, seating, lighting, sound, signage, entries/exits, and vegetation must be designed with functionality in mind so that visitors can navigate the space. However, these and other architectural elements create rhetorical effects on audiences of these spaces– sometimes intentionally and sometimes circumstantially. Therefore, it is important to understand how the rhetorical effects of space can impact visitors’ abilities to construct meaning through their experience.
Learn More about the designers:
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe designer: Dagmar von Wilcken
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum designer: James Ingo Freed
Physical Space Directs our Experience and Understanding
Museums and memorials play an important role in educating visitors about the events preceding, comprising, and following the Holocaust, but they also play a role in perpetuating a living memory of the events through objects, architectural designs, and reenactment practices (Oztig 63). The use of these modes of communication not only share information, but elicit emotional responsiveness from audiences who can then use their agential capacities to contribute to education and preserve memory. For instance, in one case study of the Jewish Museum Berlin, psychologists found that architectural design plays a significant role in the emotional response visitors can have to museum and memorial spaces, claiming that memorial museums must maintain a balance between “embodying historical narratives and facilitating reflective experiences” (Zhihui Zhang et al 2). Their data found that vast empty spaces “invoke deep reflection” and materials like concrete contribute to fear and anxiety. The study also showed that using audio to contribute to a multi-sensory effect enhanced emotional engagement in the sections it was used in (Zhihui Zhang et al 8). So, while objects, images, and labels that comprise exhibits play a part in educating visitors, architectural choices impact visitors’ emotional synthesis with those informational pieces.
Curating an emotional connection to information about the Holocaust ensures an appropriate rhetorical effect that reflects the solemnity and horror of the events and avoids the potential of information having an entertaining effect that could misconstrue the memory of the event and those affected. One of the ways in which a museum or memorial can curate the synthesis of information with emotion is through the way a visitor’s experience is designed. A directed approach organizes information to craft a specific narrative that guides the visitor’s understanding by situating it in historical events. An undirected approach organizes information thematically, relying on the visitor’s personal exploration of the information to create meaning.
Located near the center of the National Mall in the U.S. capital, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is a directed experience that is organized chronologically, sorted by events. The museum experience comprises four stories with the permanent collection filling three floors, organized by major events– Nazi Assault: 1933-1939, Final Solution: 1940-1944, and Aftermath: 1945- present. The experience starts on the fourth floor and presents the Nazi rise to power as well as an exploration of other countries' failure to intervene. The third floor comprises information on and artifacts representing the ghettos and camps. The second floor explores rescuers, resistance, and eventual liberation. The layout is designed so that visitors must walk down halls and through rooms, moving so that they are ultimately flushed out onto the first floor of the museum. The first floor includes a spacious lobby, a Hall of Witness, and a children’s exhibit called Daniel's Story. A concourse located below the museum includes a theater, an auditorium, an education center, and a rotating special exhibit.
Located in the center of Berlin, Germany the Museum to the Murdered Jews of Europe (MMJE) is an undirected experience that is organized conceptually, with an abstract monument located across almost five acres outside of the museum and rooms sorted by personal aspects of tragedy within it. The external memorial is made of concrete blocks called stelae. The adjacent information center is a single floor that includes a timeline of the Nazi rise to power, and four rooms: Room of Dimensions, Room of Families, Room of Names, and Sites of Extermination. The Room of Dimensions displays diary entries, letters, and notes highlighting the experiences and feelings of persecuted Jews. The Room of Families uses the histories of 15 Jewish families to illustrate the diversity of those who were affected. The Room of Names identifies each of the individual six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust in an effort to preserve their memory. The Room of Sites uses film and photographs to identify 220 sites of persecution and extermination. This final room leads into an exit foyer that includes an optional digital information portal and video interviews. Additionally, the final room includes pictures and captions for all the Holocaust memorial sites in Europe. A reading room and special exhibitions are also available spaces offered within the center.
What goes into exhibit design?
Adam Savage's interview with Smithsonian designer Emily Shaw offers insight into the complex process of designing museum exhibits. It highlights the careful thought required to present materials in ways that engage and connect with visitors, ensuring the lasting impact and effectiveness of the museum experience and its message.
Seating Situates Experience
Accessibility of seating options can contribute to or detract from equitable representation of the voices and stories that contribute to our understanding of what the Holocaust entailed and its pervasive impact. Designers must acknowledge that a museum is an educational and social space for people of varying backgrounds and cultures, and that content should be responsive to audience’s needs (MacLeod 134). Exhibitions “contain spatial cues” and “deploy spatial strategies” to “privilege certain readings” and “offer ways of thinking that play a part in tackling prejudice” (MacLeod 186). Additionally, audiences may construct a wide range of meanings based on their own experience that may be influenced by their socio-cultural history or their accessibility needs.
Universal design is a concept that promotes inclusion for people of all ages and abilities. Universal design refers to the design of environments usable to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of age, ability, or circumstance (Fortuna et al). The concept comprises seven architectural principles that are determined to increase the equitability of experience in public spaces. It recommends that designs should minimize sustained physical efforts which could reduce visitor’s ability to interact with or within spaces. While the more obvious application of this principle is to design spaces to suit a variety of physical needs, its application becomes more nuanced in consideration of psychological and emotional needs. Emotions are complex psychological states that encompass subjective experiences, physical reactions, and observable behaviors. They are fundamental to the human experience, significantly influencing how we perceive, engage with, and recall our surroundings (Zhihui Zhang et al 1). Emotional experience can physically impact the body via physiological effects like stress, muscle tension, difficulty breathing, anxiety, and exhaustion. The architecture and exhibit contents of both the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum are intentionally designed to generate complex emotional responses to the content. Therefore it would seem that part of accessibility considerations for visitors would include functional elements that offer reprieve for those who are severely emotionally impacted, but do not wish to skip portions of the experience. One potential solution to this issue is the thoughtful inclusion museum benches. When the inclusion of seating is limited it can create unforeseen issues that negatively affect visitors’ experiences; this potentially disrupts their ability to emotionally connect with exhibit contents, navigate space, and create meaning from their experience.
The Field of Stelae comprises nearly five acres with concrete pillars starting low to the ground around the perimeter and growing taller towards the center. The memorial is not identified by signs or labels and does not indicate any connection to the Holocaust on its own. Public benches located at the perimeter of the memorial are limited and seating within the field is not available. Lack of seating available outside invites problems. People with the physical need to sit will use the pillars of the memorial itself, which may inadvertently encourage additional inappropriate behavior. Architect Peter Eisenman explained the purpose of his design by saying
“The project represents the instability inherent in a system with a seemingly rational structure and the potential for its gradual dissolution. It makes it clear that an ostensibly rational and orderly system loses touch with human reason when it becomes too large and grows beyond its originally intended proportions. Then the seemingly ordered systems begin to uncover their own disturbances and chaos potentials, and it becomes clear that all closed systems must fail with a closed order.”
Ironically, the very degradation the architect intends to represent with the rigidly structured and non-informative memorial appears to occur in the social behavior of those who encounter it. People may move quickly or misunderstand the solemnity expected in the outdoor space.
Seating within the information center is centered and available in each room inside. Reflective of an undirected experience, visitors inside can position themselves in a variety of ways so that they can engage with multiple items or nothing at all. This adheres to the principles of universal design by allowing visitors inside an option for emotional or physical reprieve that does not prevent them from participating in the full experience of each room by forcing them forward through the exhibit. Seating is additionally available in the foyer where visitors can elect to further their understanding of thematic concepts and history using reading materials and accessing a digital archive.
Throughout the three stories that comprise the USHMM permanent collection, seating within the exhibition space is limited. Depending on their engagement with the features of each floor, visitors may spend over an hour standing and bending before finding available seating. Benches that are available are situated so as to force the gaze on specific items of the collection or nothing at all. Visitors with mobility issues or experiencing overstimulation may be forced to skip portions of the collection, meaning they may miss features they could have otherwise found meaningful. Visitors who utilize seating have limited choices in how to focus their attention. This may very well be a by-product of the design of the space. In an interview with the L.A. Times, the architect James Ingo Freed explained that the design of the building was meant to replicate the industrial efficiency and utilitarian designs that made extermination possible during the Holocaust saying
“I have to make a building that allows for horror, sadness. I don’t know if you can make a building that does this, if you can make an architecture of sensibility. Because that is really what it is.”
The resulting design compels large swaths of visitors through narrow hallways, spiraling rooms, over bridges, and through dimly lit, sound-dampened spaces before they are met with seating near the more well-lit exits, bathrooms, and elevators, or in enclaves set off from the focus pieces of the exhibit.
Ample seating is available in the brightly-lit lounges, decorated with abstract art, that separate the floors’ exhibits, as well as in communal spaces like the lobby. The museum offers a Hall of Remembrance that is accessible immediately upon exiting the permanent exhibit. This room is hexagonal with a high ceiling that fills the room with bright, natural lighting. This room has ample seating and visitors can utilize it to light candles in remembrance of victims and sit to silently reflect on what they just experienced.
Conclusions
In essence, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's directed experience leads visitors through a structured narrative of historical events, while the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe's undirected experience allows for personal exploration of thematic concepts related to the Holocaust. Each approach serves distinct purposes in educating and memorializing the events of this dark chapter in history.
Sources
- Fortuna, Jennifer K., Kayleigh Thomas, Jenna Asper, Laura Matney, Kyra Chase, Stephanie Ogren, and Julia VanderMolen. “A Survey of Universal Design at Museums: Current Industry Practice and Perceptions.” The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, 2003, vol, 11, no. 1, pp 1-15, https://doi.org/10.15453/2168-6408.1994.
- MacLeod, Suzzane, ed. Reshaping Museum Space. Routledge, 2005. EBSCO.
- Oztig, Lacin Idil. “Holocaust Museums, Holocaust Memorial Culture, and Individuals: A Constructivist Perspective.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, Jan. 2023, pp. 62–83. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2021.2011607.
- Zhihui Zhang, et al. “Emotionally-Oriented Design in Museums: A Case Study of the Jewish Museum Berlin.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 15, July 2024. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1423466.