Healing light: a message of condolence and solidarity in Madrid

On 11 March 2004 a series of bombs exploded within minutes of each other on four commuter trains in Madrid. Calculated to explode during the morning rush hour, when the trains were packed with office workers, students and schoolchildren, the resulting blasts killed 191 and injured 1755. To date it is the most deadly attack on a European city by Islamist extremists.

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Physically commemorating such dreadful events can often be fraught with difficulties, but the city now has a dignified public memorial which provides a place of calmness and serenity outside Atocha Station, where the commuter trains were due to terminate. Designed by local practice FAM Arquitectos, it takes the elementally simple form of an 11m high cylinder made of 15000 shimmering glass blocks. Powerfully emblematic of the rejection of violence, the ethereally transparent glass tube penetrates down into a subterranean chamber, literally and symbolically bringing light into a dark place. The inside of the cylinder is lined with an ETFE membrane printed with messages of condolence and solidarity in many languages which were originally left by the public at the scene of the bombings. Below is a womblike blue chamber furnished only with a simple black steel bench for quiet contemplation. The names of the dead are inscribed on a frosted glass panel at the chamber's entrance.

Often it is the simplest memorials that are the most effective (for instance, Maya Lin's black granite monument to the Vietnam War and Lutyens' Cenotaph) and this has a similarly inspiring clarity of purpose and execution, which struck a chord with the jury. C. S.

COPYRIGHT 2007 EMAP Architecture
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning