The book traces the different stages of the construction of the European Centre for the Deported Resistance Fighters and of the Struthof Museum, made by one of the most interesting representatives of emerging European architecture.
The book presents the memorial museum the French architect Faloci built on the ruins of the Nazi concentration camp of Struthof, close to the town of Natzwiller, in Alsace. The camp, destined to the European Resistance fighters, housed the convicts who extracted the blocks of red granite necessary to the construction of the regime buildings designed by Albert Speer. The site, which in 1950 became an historical monument, in 2000 was the subject of an international architecture competition launched by France. It was won by Pierre Louis Faloci who transformed it into an exhibition centre dedicated to memory and to the 40.000 people who lost their lives. The book, introduced by a critical essay by Mauro Galantino, one of the most original Italian architects, includes studio sketches, construction documents and details as well as photographs of the finished building. The images illustrate the sophisticated technical processes of superimposition of the new structure over the existent ones, emphasizing the coherent use of different materials: black granite, steel and cement.