The new memorial building is located in the Pingfang area of Harbin, in the middle of the 20th century, a former independent city - on the site of the base of Detachment 731. This unit of the Japanese army conducted experiments on people in order to create bacteriological weapons, as well as to study the limits of human endurance - reactions during vivisection, to high atmospheric pressure, hypothermia, dehydration, etc. As a result of these crimes, several thousand Chinese, Russians, Koreans, etc. were killed. During the retreat of the Japanese army in 1945, the base was blown up, but its ruins have survived to this day, since 1982 a museum has been opened there. Now the complex has been supplemented with a new exhibition hall.
The team of authors under the leadership of He Jingtang chose for their construction the metaphor of a "black box", which recorded the historical truth: as if the split volume of the building reflects the impact of external forces on it, as in a plane crash. In order not to disturb the historical landscape with ruins - including the chimneys of the crematorium where the victims were burned - the new museum is sunk into the ground. Its three towers also seem to be a response to the numerous chimneys of Harbin's factories surrounding the former base of Detachment 731.
Residential and industrial buildings surrounded this site, but the architects found it ethically impossible to enclose the historical complex with a wall. Instead, a plaza below ground level separates it from the street, and a new park also plays the role of a buffer zone. The land within the complex is covered with dark gray gravel.
Despite the fact that, for political reasons, the crimes of Unit 731 were not really investigated, and almost none of its leaders were punished, the architects emphasize that their project is as far as possible from an "angry" approach. On the contrary, they tried to look at what happened there in 1935-1945 from the perspective of “human civilization”.
