After briefly considering plans to adapt the existing buildings on the
site, the Council received permission to raze the Auditor's complex in
December, 1984. Several architects were successively commissioned to
produce a plan for the nascent Holocaust memorial. The council had a
difficult time deciding the optimal scope and nature of the space. The
first architects contacted were the firm of Notter, Finegold and
Alexander. They presented a plan to the council in December 1984 that
was smooth and curvilinear, with a facade of red and gray stone. It
was reminiscent of Washington architecture, but featured a fractured
oval shape to symbolize the fullness of life interrupted by the
Holocaust. Another design, prepared by a staff architect at the Tower
Construction Company named Karl Kaufmann, had a Hall of Remembrance
suspended over the entrance. After the council expressed a preference
for Kaufmann's plan, original architect Finegold reluctantly agreed to
work with Kaufmann's design. The U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, which
has vetoing authority for all official architecture, found the design
pompous, strident, and inappropriate. Maurice Finegold eventually
termed the Kaufmann plan as "neo-classicism worthy of Albert Speer,"
the architect of the Third Reich (Linenthal 83). In 1986, the council
approached I.M. Pei, who was too busy with the Louvre annex to take on
the project, and finally retained the services of Pei's partner, James
Ingo Freed. The eight years of negotiation and preliminary planning
were over, and, with the retention of Freed, the work of planning the
physical building would begin. The nature of the permanent exhibit was
still undecided.
cont'd....
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.revisionism/browse_thread/thread/7282e3a8d85411b5/c858e2089dd40197?q=architect&rnum=2#