Remembrance and Architecture the House of Fates Project

Abstract

The changes which took place a quarter of a century ago in the countries of Europe’s Eastern Bloc transformed the social conventions of the time. A kind of social dialog has been started, about the Holocaust amongst other things. New memorials and monuments dedicated to the Holocaust have been constructed in the countries of the region as a result. Several phases can be identified in the building of monuments to the Holocaust over the past 25 years. These changes in the process of recollection and in the building of the monuments themselves are typified by the House of Fates project. The memorial center was built in Budapest for the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust. But the changes in recollection did not stop there, did not come to a standstill in Hungary. It is a mark of the sensitivity of the subject that although the center was finished by the fall of 2015, it has still not opened its gates to the public. In the meantime the project has appeared in several Hungarian professional journals, however these articles do not venture far beyond the realm of basic description. Here we are attempting to analyze the project architecturally. Our analysis shows how the initial usage of primary symbols turns to more contemplative, more abstract images and devices.