Winning design for Jewish Chidren Museum in Italy announced

Villa Emma Jewish children museum Nonantola Bianchini & Lusiardi architects 2

The Villa Emma Foundation has announced the results of an international design competition for a museum and memorial dedicated to 73 Jewish children who found refuge in Nonantola, Italy, during WWII.

Background
The new museum/memorial is aimed to present the history of a group of Jewish children and teens who were rescued by the Delasem (Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants) from Germany, Austria, and Croatia in 1940 to move them to Palestine after their families were killed by the Nazis or deported into concentration camps.
After the group, during the journey, got stuck in Slovenia because of the German invasion of the country, the children and their guides fortuitously moved to the village of Nonantola, northern Italy, and found refuge in Villa Emma, a large semi-abandoned country house belonging to an Italian Jewish businessman, where they stayed for 18 months and fraternized with the local population, mostly consisting of anti-fascist people.
In 1943, when the German troops invaded Italy, the situation suddenly became dangerous and the children were hidden by the locals, led by Dr. Giuseppe Moreali and Father Arrigo Beccari (both later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations), in houses and hideouts in the village and its outskirts. Subsequently, to save them from the SS who were aware of their presence, the group moved to Switzerland disguised as Italian schoolchildren and from there to Palestine.
Except for one boy, Salomon Papo, who got sick and was captured by the SS in the hospital and deported to Auschwitz, all children safely reached Palestine where many of them still live today.

The architectural design competition
The competition brief asked the participants to design not just a museum, but a “place for memory”, a multifunctional center that, taking the cue from the Villa Emma children’s exemplary history, can celebrate, foster, and promote the ideal and practice of tolerance, acceptance, and solidarity among apparently different people.

With a net floor area of 700 sqm / 7.600 sqft, the new building will contain a 350-square-meter permanent exhibition gallery, workshops, meeting rooms, a documentation center, the Villa Emma Foundation offices, and a 1200-square-meter park.
After a 6-month long procedure, which selected three designs for the final evaluation stage, the Jury selected the proposal by Italian architectural firm Bianchini & Lusiardi Associati -Riccardo Bianchini and Federica Lusiardi – as the winner, with Japan’s Satoshi Okada Architects as runner-up.

Davanti a Villa Emma – Jewish Children Memorial and Museum – architectural design competition – Pictures

Bianchini & Lusiardi Associati – 1st prize (https://www.bianchinielusiardi.com/)