MIM - Museum für Immigration in Miami - Honorable mention

Der geistige und körperliche Prozess der Immigration wurde für das Museum umgekehrt und dem Besucher so nicht nur intellektuell, sondern auch mental erlebbar dargestellt. Durch die Umkehrung der vorhandenen Landschaft auf einem schmalen Streifen wurde der Strand als Symbol der Sehnsucht durchschnitten. Das Museum wurde Teil des öffentlichen Strandes.
 
From Coast to Coast
 
From Coast to Coast, the new architectural landmark for the immigrants in Miami Beach, shall be understood as a unique horizontal monument regarding the paradisiacal and the cosmopolitan of the South Beach of Miami. In memory of those who left family and home searching for their own American Dream, the monument shall represent the meeting from opposites, from leaving and arriving, from loneliness and multiculturalism, from fear and hope. The antagonism of circumstances and feelings comes along with the first step in direction of the unknown. From Coast to Coast consists of an horizontal stripe which gives form to this contradiction in real time and space. Bringing the „extremes“ together, intentional allegorized through the inversion of ocean and sand, the museum illustrates the antagonism which the immigrant is confronted with and invites the visitor to experience it. As soon as the visitor reaches the museum, he must leave the „mainland“, the busy cityscape, to get into the exhibition: descending to the level of the monument, the visitor is surrounded by all kinds of old ships and boats constrained into the narrow and seemingly infinite channel of the monument. Passing through the „Boat-Entrance-Hall“, the visitor can walk from boat to boat, where the temporary and the permanent exhibitions are organized. The boats are attached to the artificial seabed of the channel like a buoy. Between the exhibition boats, the „Boat-Cafeteria“ is located. At the end of the exhibition, the visitor is confronted with the seemingly insuperable artificial expanse of water, extending to the new shoreline. To leave the exhibition area, the visitor must now take a boat which brings him to the desired shore. At the end of the pier the visitor is confronted again with the infinite expanse of water, the ocean, taking chance to contemplate the horizon in memory of those who came from the other coast.