Yad Vashem Museum- The narrative of the Holocaust
Buildings are created to serve an activity or function and in the process of achieving these objectives, it creates meaning for itself; not necessarily confined to memory, space and time. In the genealogical understanding of building ‘styles’, we have before us several created meaning; each denoting the epoch of its construction time and makers. The building in this manner somehow acts more like a sign signifying something more than the building in its physical sense. Roland Barthes (d.1980) puts the notions of our understanding of the world to rejig and re-organization. Barthes emphasizes the distinction between reader, author, and observer intertwined with the context and background of the observed object. In his essay, From ‘Work to Text’, Barthes argues that the relation of writer, reader, and observer is changed by movement from work to text. In this light, Barthes’ propose of the differences between work and text in terms of method, genres, signs, plurality, filiation, reading, and pleasure.
Yad Vashem, a cultural fortress located in Jerusalem is a signifier of a distinct style of building design that exists independent of what it signifies in historical context, i.e., the Jewish genocide during the Holocaust. Holocaust has inspired numerous art and architectural works and continues to do so. There is something deep in the tragic event that left 6 Million Jews dead with same number homeless, starving and suffering. History has seen such a magnanimous scale of genocidal obliteration rarely. The sheer way of systematic isolation, the ghettoization of their colonies, forced labor and eventual ‘final solution’ reverberates still; in the camps of Auschwitz, chambers of Krakow, labor sites of Dachau…and so on. Jewish communities, in particular, had always sought ways to remember the hard times there people had to go through during the tumultuous and war-torn epoch of World War II. Architecture has especially proved to be one such medium for rendering the era vividly. Yad Vashem is a fine example of architecture that takes the visitor on a flash reverie of the dreaded past. The museum situated in the cultural capital of Israel: Jerusalem atop the Mount Herzi-‘the mountain of remembrance’ projects the sufferings on two realms of vision and psychological.
While locating the building, initially it is hard to find the building on the ground. The structure is mostly fused with the landscape, submerged mostly inside the ground. The Museum is located on the edge of Jerusalem on the slope of Mount Herzi. It is the largest Holocaust museum in Israel. The historic museum consists of a mostly underground prismatic structure 16.5 meters high and 183 meters long (54 x 600 feet) that cuts through the Yad Vashem hillside, penetrating from the south and protruding to the north. A network of the sky lit underground galleries lines both sides of the prism. The mevoah is an arcaded concrete pavilion roofed by skylights and trellises, which cast ever-changing shadow patterns. It is reminiscent of a Sukkah, a traditional hut used during Jewish festivals. The building uses the effect of light, both natural and artificial as a component of the historical narrative. The ends of the prismatic tube are kept open looking down at the slopes of the mountain.
The method which Barthes’ enunciates digresses from the nuance of intertwining the building and the history behind it. The triangulated structure submerging partially into the ground surface is an architectural object which stands outside the province of interpretation. The interpretation comes into domain only in the mind of the observer. That’s when the building becomes representamen of the historical event. The physical attributes of the building subvert the interpretation in an objective study of the structure in relation to its elements. As a genre, the Yad Vashem can be classified into, say brutalist or modern architecture but the meaning it signifies remain arbitrary to some extent and falls out of the concept of classifications. Even the interpretation varies drastically between individuals. A person with sound knowledge of Holocaust definitely will make more or should we say ‘his own’ understanding of the building itself as a whole and even can relate to the choice of space, materials, and composition, the architect has used. Such vision remains unnoticed to a relatively naïve person who will interpret the building very differently, completely unaware of the thinking that has shaped the building. It makes alternative sense to him than the first person. This difference comes in the process of signification since the sign is a whole that results from the association of the signifier (sound, image or object) and signified (concept). The building thus is more than a building to the ‘learned people’.
As work has authorship, so has a building. This filiation, according to Barthesian idea corresponds merely to the physical object-a book or a building in this case. However, the meaning the building tries to convey is beyond the scope of a specific author or maker. To ascribe authorship to the work is a futile effort since the historicity that colors the aspect of the interpretation of work is a collective memory.
The implied meaning is subject to history whereas the building is subject of material. Material and history follow different courses altogether. It nonetheless helps in creating a bond, which Barthes’ calls ‘pleasure’. If viewed as an accessible entity, a piece of work arouses feelings of pleasure because there is no feeling separation between the reader (observer) and the writer (architect) and the text (interpretation, historicity) transcends any language or social barriers. It is thus completely upon us how to look at an object that is work and how we are consuming the meaning if they are implied; for granted. The multi-layers which weave the work has multi-dimensions and perspectives from which any work can be studied and interpreted.
