Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial Design Competition

An open design competition is being sponsored by the Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial organization (ACBHM, Inc.), a private non-profit foundation chartered for the purpose of erecting the Memorial, in co-operation with the City of Atlantic City, which has dedicated a superb site for this purpose. Our competition will be advertised nationally and internationally, and juried by a world class panel of experts in the field of architecture and design. Responses are welcomed from throughout the world.                 

THE DESIGN COMPETITION PROGRAM: The competition is an open, two-stage design competition. At the first stage, digital submission of the design concept will be online only. These will be judged anonymously by members of our distinguished Jurors, who may choose six to ten finalists. Each finalist will be awarded an honorarium of $2,500 to develop a three-dimensional model and a fully realized scheme for the site. All final presentations will be publicly exhibited and judged at a convocation of the Jurors, and the winner will be declared at a public ceremony. The Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial organization will enter into good faith negotiations with the winning competitor for a contract to provide the services necessary to realize the Memorial. Concurrently the design will be reviewed by the planning board and fine arts board of the city of Atlantic City. In the event the winning design is eventually built, the winner will be awarded a commission to realize the winning design.

THE DESIGN CHALLENGE: This competition seeks to stimulate fresh thinking about public memorials, and invites ideas from diverse fields. The requirements for the Memorial and how it occupies the site are as unconstrained as possible. Participants are encouraged to contemplate the meaning of the Holocaust and genocide in our lives today, and to invent a fitting design for this time and this place. We look to our competitors to propose the appropriate metaphors and forms for such a Memorial.

A FINAL THOUGHT:The Holocaust is surely among the darkest moments in modern history and all recorded civilization. Its infamous accounts mandate that mankind never again tolerate the unjust brutalizatiion and destruction of any group or individual. Yet, in spite of the Holocaust, history continues to repeat itself. This Memorial will be dedicated to all future generations to stand in unity against such wholesale victimization and genocide. Our goal is to create a Memorial that shall raise awareness in the minds of visitors to man’s unconsciousable inhumanity to man. The Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial shall stand as witness and barrier against the future repetition of any such reprehensible acts.

www.acbhm.org