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Steilneset Memorial

Steilneset Memorial

Peter Zumthor & Louise Bourgeois

Photo: Bjarne Riesto · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Vardø, Finnmark, Norway
Client / Owner
Town of Vardø, Varanger Museum and Norwegian Public Roads Administration
Year
Completed 2011
Access
Public
Typology
Cultural
Style
—

The Steilneset Memorial in Vardø honors the people executed for witchcraft in Finnmark. The architect Peter Zumthor and the artist Louise Bourgeois designed it. The town of Vardø, the Varanger Museum and the Norwegian Public Roads Administration commissioned it. Design began in 2006, and Queen Sonja opened it on June 23, 2011. The article names no style.

Zumthor's structure is about 120 meters (410 feet) long, a timber walkway under a coated fibreglass membrane on wooden frames. It has 91 small windows, one for each executed person, and each carries a text based on original sources. A single lightbulb shines through each window.

Bourgeois designed a separate building of weathering steel and glass. It holds a chair with flames in its seat, ringed by seven oval mirrors. It was her last major work, finished after her death in 2010.

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