An ‘archaeological excavation’ in the Milan Central Station. Architecture and narration in the Memorial of the Shoah of Milan

Abstract

The ‘bowels of Milan Central Station’ – an invisible manoeuvring space used for the deportation of Jews and political opponents to the extermination camps – bears witness to its own history revealed in physical aspects – organization of the space through juxtaposed spans that characterize the entire site’s morphology – and cultural aspects: the testimonies of survivors. In the project of the Memorial of the Shoah, the ‘remains’ of the original concrete structures – what remains after the contamination of time, material and memory – are reworked. The ‘remains’ are considered an indispensable element of the project and their preservation legitimises the design of the new parts of the Memorial. The project also objectifies memory to create a sequence of spaces and objects, which document and testify the Shoah, and which, through the experience of visitors, is capable of creating a new narrative. In this sense, the station becomes the subject of a critical modification through an imaginary and physical excavation that reveals the immense, ‘total’ solidity of this archaeological find of our time. The project offers a new interpretation of correspondence between a plan and a construction system using a ‘principle of distancing’, a physical and temporal gap between the new parts and the ‘remains’. By reworking all the elements of the station – through a process of reassembling – the project witnesses to the tragedy of the Shoah, without any further comment. Through the critical interpretation of the document-monument, architecture reaffirms the ethical dimension of memory. Keywords: Memory, Narration, Archaeology, Distancing, Assemblage