The jury of the international open and, most importantly, anonymous competition chose the Finnish architectural studio Lahdelma & Mahlamäki from 10 finalists. Among their competitors were Daniel Libeskind and Peter Eisenman, authors of projects for the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.
The participants were required to create a building project with the most general layout of the interior space: the fact is that the future exposition and the very appearance of the interior had already been approved in advance.
The laconic rectangular volume of the glass and limestone building will be cut by one wide corridor. The start of construction is scheduled for next year, the museum is due to open in 2008. The construction budget is about USD 30 million.
It will be located in a park in the city center, near the monument to the victims of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising.
Nevertheless, according to the museum's management, this will not be another Holocaust memorial: the main focus will be on the eventful and accomplished 800-year history of the Jewish diaspora in Poland. For centuries, this country was considered the most favorable place for this people to live; before World War II, about 3 million Jews lived there (now there are less than 20,000 of them).
