How do you speak of the unspeakable? That is the aesthetic conundrum posed by every memorial to the holocaust. Daniel Libeskind, principal of Studio Libeskind, based in New York, took on this challenge for Canada’s National Holocaust Monument, which opened in October 2017 in the capital city of Ottawa. The competition-winning scheme, commemorating victims of the Nazi genocide and recognizing the 40,000 survivors who made it to Canada, owes a debt to Libeskind’s seminal Jewish Museum in Berlin, completed in 1999. Each has few right angles, and both are designed to create a sense of unease that is relevant to the history they evoke. This new project—an open-air, poured-concrete pavilion that sits across the street from the Canadian War Museum (2008) by Moriyama & Teshima with Griffiths Rankin Cook—is meant to be a public place of respite and reflection.

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