The exhibition Victims: A Work by John Hejduk materializes the unbuilt work of the New York architect, presented here for the first time by the Leopoldo Rother Architecture Museum at the National University of Colombia. Alongside the scale model of the project, the 67 figures are accompanied by narratives, illustrations, and a short film titled Structures of a Wound.
The exhibition offers a multisensory experience through the empathy that Hejduk projected through architecture. The staging is particularly relevant, materializing in a country whose population has lived as victims for endless decades.
The exhibition will be open to the public at the museum until February 2020, Monday through Thursday from 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM, and Friday and Saturday from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
Official Description
The Project
The Victims park is the result of the research and work of New York architect John Hejduk, who, rather than merely designing buildings, created characters with a strong symbolic, mythical, and mysterious quality. Through them, and with the help of his poetic writings, Hejduk tells stories and conveys a deep message in his work—in this case, for the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
The site for the park is located in Berlin, on the former grounds of the Gestapo headquarters and multiple torture chambers during World War II; it was also an area degraded by its proximity to the Berlin Wall. Over time, the site became an urban void hiding a dark past. Consequently, the location has an undeniable connection to memory, and in 1983, the IBA exhibition launched an international competition to reclaim it.
Hejduk proposed a park filled with trades and memories represented in a series of structures, where each structure contains architecture and each architecture contains memory. All the elements composing the park are represented in drawings and writings, from which each visitor can create their own interpretation.
A total of 67 figures bring the park to life; the focus is not on the architecture itself, but on the memories and lives they evoke. Each one has a name, which can be that of a trade; in this park, the painter is just as important as the doctor and the crochet lady, as they all bring different memories and wounds with them.
Through the park and its structures, Hejduk succeeds in giving the city and architecture the capacity for the mnemonic—a quality inherent in the constant struggle against forgetting and indifference, a struggle faced daily by the victims of violence.
The Exhibition
Upon entering the museum, visitors encounter the architect's own introduction to his park alongside a brief biography, guarded by the wing of an angel caught in Hejduk's traps.
After ascending the museum's solemn ramp, visitors lose themselves in the story of the angel hunt proposed by the author, a quest to capture mythological beasts in order to shroud architecture in their fantastical attributes, thereby bringing the buildings to life as only he can.
Beside the calendar of the architect's thoughts, two large guards watch visitors unsettlingly and guard the entrance, though no one knows what lies behind it. To enter, one must pass between these two guardians—if they allow it—for they are protective and wary, guarding what is most valuable and fragile: memory.
Crossing the threshold, the visitor sighs and draws near; 67 characters, enveloped in the cold Berlin winter, converse with one another, occupying the main hall of the museum. Children play, people and beasts meet, angels fall into traps, and a tram encircles the park on its constant journey. The walls clad in black serve as blackboards for the white drawings describing each structure, and beneath them, poems and narratives of those who dwell there.
After viewing the drawings, reading the poems, and losing themselves in the project, visitors walk away with an inner question, unaware that someone is watching them. An angel flies over the park unnoticed, witnessing the transformation of the attendees.
The Process
The park is constructed with all 67 of its 1:30 scale models in the main gallery of the museum. The technique and execution of the models combined wood and 3D printing, achieving the precise textures and geometries required by each structure. A construction effort spanning a couple of years culminates in enclosing the park with the tram line, installing telephone poles, and placing each model in its proper position, thereby achieving the high quality of craftsmanship of the exhibition.
The secondary room contains project information at a smaller scale: a context model showing the different stations the project would pass through—had it been built—an axonometric catalog of the 67 structures, and a calendar revealing some of Hejduk's thoughts that harbor the origin of this intriguing park.
Structures of a Wound: An Animation for Victims of Architecture
The short film accompanying the exhibition narrates a dream project. It is a journey that captures the essence and the complex world imagined by John Hejduk, where architecture is not merely structural but, by representing a memory, personifies us. Specifically, this first-person journey places the viewer in the perspective of a curious child wandering through the Victims park. The child moves through and discovers life inside some of the 67 objects, unraveling their meanings or simply delighting in the static faces within the New York architect's architecture.
During the journey, an angel watches from above, and only when the child questions their own life and recognizes the park as a construction of their memory and the wounds it leaves behind, does the angel fall to its death. This animation is an attempt to project the construction of the park in its entirety, rethinking how we construct a memorial center, and rethinking our very relationship with architecture. The short film can be viewed at the museum alongside the exhibition.
CREDITS:
Victims Team: Ricardo Daza Caicedo, Gabriela Silva Correa, Laura K. Pineda Guacaneme, María del Pilar Zárate, and Louis Sebastián Sequeda Toro
Management and Coordination, Leopoldo Rother Architecture Museum: Laura V. Sepúlveda Henao
Animated Short Film: Structures of a Wound: Mav Nuhels
Models: VICTIMS Team + Daniel Felipe Muñoz Aragón, Paula Andrea Guayara Pulido, Miguel Forero, and the students of the Theory of Architecture III and IV classes with Professor Ricardo Daza.
Text: Ricardo Daza Caicedo - Gabriela Silva Correa
Photography: Laura Sepúlveda Henao
This article was written by Santiago Baraya. The translation is powered by AI.
