European Centre of Deported Resistance Members of Natzweiler - Struthof

The Struthof camp, where 40000 people died, was one of the fourteen Nazi concentration camps and was mostly reserved to European Resistance members. The main activity of deportees was extracting granite blocks for Albert Speers buildings. This work, made at a 800 meters altitude, in extremely rough weather conditions, used to be the first stage of prisoners killing process which was completed by a crematorium, a gas chamber and medical experiments. In 1955 a project was designed to turn the camp into a place of remembrance. This work subject was to create the European Centre of Deported Resistance Members at the entrance of the camp along with the Struthof Museum in the first barrack and to lay out the surrounding area. The first idea was to design a very big wall between the car access and the beginning of the walkway up to the camp entrance. Another idea was to place the building on an ancient cellar, 150 meters long, built by the prisoners, which used to be underground and not visible to the visitors. The project is set up with deep, almost archaeological, respect towards the cellar, that becomes a major element of functional layout. The walkway runs along the big wall and is centred on the camp portal. The visitor can perceive, at his arrival, the outline of the cellar that has been partially uncovered in a « landscape dramatization » process. Then the cellar disappears under the new building.

Going up along the big wall allows the visitor to see the portal far away while entering the camp. A vast hall presents the fourteen concentration camps, a temporary exhibition and a vigilance space. On the first floor there are a relaxation space and the administration offices. On the ground floor a long corridor carved by natural light leads to the basement and to a permanent exhibition around the cellar, which has been entirely bared. The place is extremely dark, documents are displayed on rearenlightened panels to match the very dramatic ambiance. Visitors get out through a staircase centred on the camp entrance, then pass through the portal to enter the first barrack that is now the Struthof museum.

The whole work can be considered as an immense landscaping project that, at the same time, re-clarifies the history of the place and re-defines a territorial partition to let the visitor realize the sense and the emotion of this place. The choice of dark anthracite, rough concrete and steel is made to amalgamate the building to the hard forest environment and to refer to barracks and camp enclosure colors. The superimposition of the new building and the cellar is made through a sophisticated constructive process as the wells, remaining unseen, pierce the cellar walls to reach hard soil. The result is a floating cellar in solidarity with the new building. The cellar works as a Canadian well; the building is designed to resist thermal and seismic shocks, thanks to tie rods between the walls.