Architettura e narrazione nel progetto del Memoriale della Shoah: uno 'scavo archeologico' nella Stazione Centrale di Milano = An 'Archaeological excavation' in the Milan Central Station. Architecture and narration in the Memorial of the Shoah of Milan

The 'belly' of Milan Central Station, an invisible maneuvering space used for the deportation of Jews and political opponents to the extermination camps, bears its own history, made of physical materials -the discipline of juxtaposed spans as a principle of spatial organization that permeates the entire site’s morphology - and cultural -the testimonies of survivors-. The project of the Memorial of the Shoah processes the status of 'find' of the existing exposed concrete structures, as a result of the contamination between time, matter and memory: this is an indispensable condition and the principle of legitimacy of every new part of the project. It is therefore possible to objectify the dimension of memory, to shape a sequence of spaces and documentation and testimony devices, able to establish, through the experience of visitors, a new narrative. So the station becomes the subject of a critical modification through the project of an ideal and physical excavation that reveals the immense and 'total' solidity of this archaeological find of our contemporaneity. The project reads the site’s coincidence of plan and construction system, through a 'principle of distancing', a physical and temporal gap between the new interventions and the find. Thanks to the process of the station materials through their montage, the project witnesses without a comment, and declares the impossibility of adhering to this place. Through the critical interpretation of the document-monument, architecture reaffirms the ethical dimension of memory.