Memorial of the victims of the witch trials

Zumthor’s memorial design is a simple gesture, a 400-foot-long memory hall framed by wood with sheets of silk suspended within — one window and one sheet per victim, all women who were burned to death — to create a soft, billowing, protective cocoon. Meanwhile, his project at the mouth of a 19th-century zinc mine includes four small all-wood constructions with slight zinc detailing; his decision to break what might have been one larger facility into smaller pavilions to house a museum, café, and other services stemmed from his desire to intervene as lightly as possible on the land, and to allow the structures themselves to retain a certain structural clarity.