Memorial in Memory of the Victims of the Witch Trials in Varanger by Peter Zumthor and Louise Bourgeois. Photo courtesy of Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner, Turistvegprosjektet.

Imagine if you were asked to design a memorial for the victims of the Salem Witch Trial. Sounds like a Bartlett student project you saw on Bustler, right? Now a similar project is becoming a reality, thanks to the spiritual den leader of architecture, Mr. Peter Zumthor.

Details and VIDEO after the jump.

The design memorial to the victims of 17th-century witch trials in Vardø, Norway is the result of a dream collaboration between Pritzker Prize laureate Peter Zumthor and the late, great artist Louise Bourgeois. The site at Steilneset, Varanger is nestled between chilly black waters and sheltered birch forests under an seemingly eternal grey sky — a brooding, solitary landscape borne out of a Bergman film and befitting the work of both the architect and artist.

Video via Architectural Record and McGraw-Hill Construction.

Zumthor designed the a 400-foot-long wood pile structure, in which a “long textiled space” of silk sheets stretched taut over wood houses an information centre with illuminated windows, each one dedicated to one of the 91 victims of the trials. Bourgeois situated her contribution nearby in a small, circular glass and steel structure, also by Zumthor, an installation consisting of a desk chair entombed in a small concrete pit with a gas flame set alight on top. Directly above, seven oval mirrors reflect the visuals ad infinitum.

ArtInfo conducted an interview with Zumthor in February asking him to comment on the nature of his collaborative effort with Bourgeois and the different meanings they each imbued in their respective works. On working with the artist, Zumthor remarked: “I had my idea, I sent it to her, she liked it, and she came up with her idea, reacted to my idea, then I offered to abandon my idea and to do only hers, and she said, ‘No, please stay.’ So, the result is really about two things — there is a line, which is mine, and a dot, which is hers… Louise’s installation is more about the burning and the aggression, and my installation is more about the life and the emotions [of the victims].”

(More on the ties that bind art and architecture in our Olafur Eliasson post from yesterday.)

The project is part of an initiative by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration in a campaign to develop roadside amenities that will dot the thoroughfares snaking through the country’s diverse terrain. Over 200 projects have been completed, with Zumthor being the only foreign participant to contribute two projects.

[via McGraw-Hill Construction Video Library]

by Samuel Medina

posted in Archifilms

tagged !ndie architecture, peter zumthor

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