The entry deadline is fast approaching for an international competition to design a Holocaust Memorial for the Atlantic City Boardwalk in New Jersey.
The final registration deadline is March 15, 2010. First-stage submissions are due on April 1, 2010. Jurors include architects Wendy Evans Joseph who helped design the U.S Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.; former Pritzker Prize winner Richard Meier; and Daniel Liebeskind, who designed the master plan for the World Trade Center site.
The competition is being sponsored by the Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial Corporation, a nonprofit foundation chartered for the purpose of building the memorial, in conjunction with Atlantic City. The municipality has donated a prime building site on the ocean side of the boardwalk. Approximately 10 million people pass by the site each year.
“The opportunity to create a design for a Holocaust memorial on a majestic site at a present world-famous resort in our own state is very exciting,” said Jason Kliwinski, president of AIA New Jersey, which is encouraging its members to participate. “Although this is an international competition, we hope our talented New Jersey architects, whose connection to our landscape runs deeper than that of architects from other states and countries, will be inspired to enter this prestigious competition.”
The two-stage design competition asks entrants to submit their design concepts in digital form as part of the first stage. A jury will then select six to ten finalists who will each be awarded $2,500 to develop a three-dimensional model and fully realized scheme for the site.
Final selections will be displayed in various Atlantic City locations during an exhibition that will likely be held this summer, at which time the community will be given the opportunity to provide feedback and vote for their favorites. The winner will be announced during a public ceremony.
Designers are encouraged to contemplate the meaning of the Holocaust and genocide in our lives today, and to invent a fitting original design for this time and place. The structure will serve as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust; a reminder of recent genocides, including those in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur; and an admonition to assume responsibility to protect human rights and fight persecution.
The entire project will cost $3 million to $5 million, with construction expected to take about a year.
Visit the ACBHM Web site for more information
