Lost Shtetl Jewish Museum in Lithuania by Lahdelma & Mahlamäki

In August 1941, the German Wehrmacht razed the Lithuanian village of Šeduva to the ground and executed its 664 Jewish residents in nearby forests. With that, the long and rich history of the village was lost. A group of international historians has spent a long time working on an exhibition concept that aims to bring Šeduva — and the history of Eastern European shtetls as a whole — back to life. Rather than focusing on the horrors of the Holocaust, the exhibition highlights the centuries-old tradition of Jewish life in the region. 

The entrance area opens up via large glass surfaces on both sides. To the left of the image, a staircase leads down to the exhibition rooms. © Aiste Rakauskaite 

The concrete planning of a significantly smaller exhibition building began in 2016 with a request to Rainer Mahlamäki. Three years earlier, his firm, Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects (LMA), had completed the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. As the new building in Šeduva was financed entirely by private funds, a competitive bidding process was not necessary. Over the years, the space requirements grew noticeably. Fortunately, LMA had designed decentralised, expandable museum architecture based on Lithuanian farmhouses from the outset. The building site is located just outside the current town centre, right next to the old Jewish cemetery. Ten houses with gabled roofs surround a long building housing the museum reception, a library and a café on the ground floor, with administrative offices on the upper level. The car park is located to the west on the access road. The main entrance, however, leads into the building from the north, where the cemetery is also located. 

Cross-section of the multi-purpose hall, Graphic © LMA 

Narrow, partly underground corridors connect the individual pavilions. The largest of these, located on the south side, houses a multi-purpose hall for temporary exhibitions and events. This hall can be accessed via a separate entrance from the car park. The permanent exhibition is spread across the six houses on the east side of the complex. Due to the site's sloping topography, these houses are one floor lower than the entrance level, yet still receive daylight through the facades and the gabled roofs' narrow skylight strips. 

The entrance to the museum is located to the north-west. Opposite, to the left, is the historic Jewish cemetery of the village. © Kuvatoimisto Kuvio 

Building regulations for public buildings made it difficult for the architects to realise their vision of unmarred gabled roofs. Ultimately, however, they achieved this. Lahdelma & Mahlamäki relocated the ventilation units, another common eyesore on museum roofs, to a separate technical building next to the car park. From there, supply air flows into the exhibition rooms via underground ducts. 

At the end of the Holocaust section of the museum, a “Corridor of Light” opens up to reveal the graves in the cemetery in front of the museum door. © Andrew Lee 

The building complex has been given a uniform envelope made of an aluminium alloy that is also used in shipbuilding. Inlays of Siberian larch frame the entrances and openings in the building. Inside the building, the colour of the facade is continued in the form of a light-coloured quartzite floor. Lahdelma & Mahlamäki also used the same natural stone for the built-in furniture and stair railings in the entrance area. In contrast, the exhibition rooms have a significantly darker granite floor. 

Eine hinterleuchtete Gedenkwand, den ehemaligen Bewohnern des Dorfs gewidmet, flankiert den Weg zum Haupteingang. © Aiste Rakauskaite 

The Šeduva exhibition cannot omit the Holocaust chapter. The rooms beneath the highest and steepest gabled roof, spread over three levels, are dedicated to this period. In the basement, visitors are greeted by a dark, oppressive corridor with a glass floor – the Holocaust Canyon. Visitors then climb past the backlit memorial wall in the entrance area, which immortalises the inhabitants of old Šeduva, up to the upper floor. There, they find a narrow, lit-from-above corridor – the Canyon of Light – which opens onto a high slit of light, offering a view of the Jewish cemetery of Šeduva. 


Discover another impressive museum building by Lahdelma & Mahlamäki in our database Detail Inspiration: The Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw commemorates the former importance of Jewish culture in Poland.