Contract - January/February 2014 - 92

Client
Simon Wiesenthal Center

Location
Los Angeles

Yazdani Studio of Cannon Design
"In this rare instance, a space takes a person on an emotional and
physical journey. Layers of information are presented in different
ways, and a balance of scale and intimacy makes the abstract real.
It's intimate and visceral, engaging all senses." JURY

By Michael Webb
Photography by
Benny Chan of Fotoworks

"Anne" is a permanent exhibition incorporating
multimedia presentations and interactive elements
in the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, a Simon
Wiesenthal Center Museum. Designed by Yazdani
Studio of Cannon Design-which has been working
with the Wiesenthal Center for 17 years-the
exhibition recreates the life of Anne Frank, based on
her writings published in The Diary of a Young Girl.
For Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center and museum director, the
exhibition provides a way to reach out to the 20,000
students who visit the museum every year, and
encourages them to apply the lessons of history
to their own lives. Having visited the house in
Amsterdam in which Anne and her family hid in the
attic for two years, he suggested that the cramped
space be recreated in the exhibition. "The idea was
92

to put every visitor in the attic with Anne," Hier says.
"We wanted them to be engaged, not detached."
Mehrdad Yazdani, principal of Yazdani Studio,
is an émigré from Iran and Anne's experience
personally resonated with him. "I first heard about
this story from my daughter when she was a
teenager, and I understood that you have to make
it seem relevant to people of that age," he says.
"At the end, we place the audience in a darkened
room and allow a compilation film to dramatize
Anne's experience of confinement, gazing out
at the sky and listening for footfalls in the night.
The students emerge into an interactive zone
that engages them on a personal level."
Visitors cross a third-floor bridge that links
the museum to the yeshiva, designed by Yazdani
in 2001. A shadowy image of Anne emerges from
a page of her diary, gazing out to the hills of
Hollywood, a place she dreamed of as a star-struck
child. Frankfurt, home to the Franks for centuries,
and Amsterdam, to which they fled in 1933, are
evoked in a row of gabled facades, silkscreened onto
a zigzag wall. Narrow steps lead down to the second
floor, where artifacts include a letter from the U.S.
State Department denying the family asylum.
To guide visitors through the linear space
and add another layer of meaning, Yazdani
introduced an "infinity wall" that undulates
and tilts. Inspired by images of stacked uniforms
taken from victims of the gas chambers, he lined
both sides of the wall with more than 15,000 tightly
folded shirts, representing a tiny fraction of the

1.5 million children whose lives were cut short by
the Holocaust. Bright colors evoke Anne's carefree
childhood, and as visitors progress, the tones darken
and the wall tilts down, compressing the space and
conveying the brutality and despair of the Nazi
occupation. Skeletal branches, etched onto glass
in the stairwell linking the two levels of the exhibit,
recall the chestnut tree below Anne's window,
which symbolized her yearning to escape.
The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam carefully
guards its legacy and forbids filming on the premises,
but Yazdani used 3D modeling software to create
a digital simulation of its interior. Across from this
simulation, a wall of shelves lined with vintage
box files swings open to reveal a screen room.
A nine-minute film, projected in the round, places
visitors side-by-side with Anne in her hiding place
as she composes her diary. Oscar-nominated actress
Hailee Steinfeld, who is close to the same age as
Anne was at the time, captures the intensity of a
teenager struggling to understand her own feelings
and keep hope alive in a world turned upside down.
The exhibition opened in October and has
already won applause from such luminaries as
Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand, and from
teachers and a board member of the Anne Frank
Fonds foundation in Basel. Yazdani has designed
an addition to the Museum of Tolerance and is
designing the exhibits for its sibling museum
in Jerusalem. c

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Contract - January/February 2014

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Contents
Contract - January/February 2014 - Intro
Contract - January/February 2014 - Cover1
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Contract - January/February 2014 - Cover3
Contract - January/February 2014 - Cover4
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