United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Washington, D.C.

This building is not simply a museum but a living institution dedicated to research, teaching, contemplation, and commemoration.

  • Cultural

While the hybrid brick and limestone exterior helps to unify stylistically dissimilar neighbors, the main facade on 15th Street is a screen that aims for spatial and emotional disengagement from the city.

The museum is organized internally around the skylit Hall of Witness, a three-story arrival, distribution, and circulation center that infuses stairs, walls, layered space, and shadows with suggestive disquiet. The experience concludes in the hexagonal Hall of Remembrance, a quasi-freestanding memorial chamber filled with light and the emptiness of loss. Unlike the more public Hall of Witness, this solemn space and its eternal flame invite quiet contemplation.

Stats

  • Site

    1.7 acres, a block-through site between 14th Street and 15th Street on the Washington Mall

  • Components

    258,000 ft2 / 24,000 m2 gross area; permanent and temporary exhibition space, archives / research center / library, Hall of Witness, Hall of Remembrance, Hall of Learning, education and conference center, Meyerhoff Theater, cinema, bookstore, ceremonial courtyard, commissioned art

  • Client

    The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, a federal agency established by Congress in 1980

  • PCF Services

    Architecture, exterior envelope, interior design of public spaces

Industrial details serve as a reminder of the advanced technological apparatus that facilitated systematic atrocity.

The architectural form is abstract and open-ended, allowing each individual to experience the space subjectively, through the lens of memory and personal history.

Exhibitions are arranged chronologically, in descending rotations around the central space. In the three-story Tower of Faces, visitors are surrounded by portraits of Lithuanian villagers whose entire community was massacred in two days.

Awards

  • National Honor Award
    American Institute of Architects, 1994
  • The Sixth Annual Jewish Cultural Achievement Award
    The National Foundation for Jewish Culture, 1994
  • Brick in Architecture Award
    American Institute of Architects / Brick Institute of America, 1999
  • Architectural Achievement Award
    New York Society of Architects, 1994
  • Award of Merit
    American Institute of Architects, District of Columbia Chapter, 1999
  • Annual Tucker Award
    Building Stone Institute, 1994

Project Credits

  • Associate Architect

    Notter Finegold & Alexander, Washington, D.C.

  • Structural

    Weiskopf & Pickworth, New York

  • Mechanical / Electrical

    Cosentini Associates, New York

  • Exhibit Design

    Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Inc., New York

  • Lighting

    Jules Fisher & Paul Marantz, New York

  • Theater

    Jules Fisher Associates, New York

  • Images

    Alan Gilbert, PCF Architects, Timothy Hursley

Related Projects