The Bucha Memorial Complex is a commemorative park honoring the innocent victims of the massacre inflicted by Russian forces during their 29 day siege in March 2022.
The primary entrance to the park is through the Voices of the Fallen Belltower, on axis with the main civic street of Bucha. It is clad in perforated CorTen steel in a decorative pattern, internally illuminated, and capped by a golden dome. Its bells give symbolic “voice” to the innocent victims and fulfill heretofore missing ceremonial functions for the church.
Once inside the park, other commemorative elements of the Bucha massacre story are to be discovered. A floating black granite slab – the sacred Burial Ground — marks the exact location of the initial mass burial of indiscriminately murdered residents. The slab defines one edge of the trapezoidal Memorial Plaza which allows for large shaded commemorative gatherings.
Commanding the plaza is the Liberation Monument which, in a single structure, symbolizes the story of the Russian occupation, its innocent victims, and the core aspiration for freedom which propelled the Ukrainian liberation of Bucha. The perimeter is clad in CorTen steel incised with the backlit names of all regional victims. The angled surface of the ring hovers oppressively above a trench lined with fractured black granite — an abstraction of the depths of death and destruction which occurred. Glass bridges lead to the symbolic core of the monument in which freedom is represented as an idealized white space with outwardly and upwardly sloping walls capped with living vegetation and. The thrust of the space culminates in the blue expanse of the sky. At the very center of the space, a spring nourishes life.
The Museum is an unassuming part of the perimeter wall of the site, while the Arboretum of the Fallen — evoking shaded woods for which the region is famous — allows for rejuvenation of body, mind and spirit.
Location: Bucha, Ukraine
Design Team: Perkins Eastman / The Kurylas Studio
Renderings: Perkins Eastman
Competition Entry