Eisenman's stone slab field lies between Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe opened in 2005. "I think it's a bit too aesthetic. I wanted something ordinary, something banal," the architect remarked when it was finished. Out of hundreds of proposals, his idea was chosen in 1999. Its visitors meanwhile number on the millions.

It was the first major public facility designed by Peter Eisenman; before 1983, when he was awarded the commission by the University of Ohio, he had been active mainly as an instructor and writer on architectural theory. The large white metal scaffolding gives the building an unfinished look - and points to Eisenman's deconstructivist approach.

Built as low-income housing in Berlin, it was one of the central works of the International Building Exhibition in 1987. Eisenman's design exploits the interplay of differing quadratic frameworks. His original plans also called for a garden facility.

Peter Eisenman took the Honorary Lion in 2004 for his design of the City of Culture in Santiago de Compostela. The Biennale's theme that year was "Metamorphous," highlighting architecture's transformative capacity. Eisenman's work demonstrated the metamorphosis of architectural forms, materials and their manner of presentation.

Near the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela on Mount Gaiás in Spain stands Peter Eisenman's huge cultural center, a mix of architecture and landscape art. Art lovers have flocked to the location in northwestern Galizia since 2010. Tucked away in the landscape are a library, an archive, an administrative building, two museums and a theater seating 1,500.

Leipzig had an Olympic dream in 2003 when it applied for the 2012 Summer Games. Tossing his hat in the ring, Eisenman came up with a futuristic model that was displayed in the exhibition "Olympic Visions on the Path to Reality" in March 2003. On the right is a design by Dresden architect Peter Kulka. The city's application was unsuccessful and the 2012 Olympics went to London.

When Berlin's Holocaust Memorial was dedicated in 2005, Eisenman said, "To be honest, I don't think about memorials all that much. I'm much more interested in sports." He may have also been thinking of his stadium built from 2003 until 2006 in Phoenix for the NFL football team Arizona Cardinals.

Usually, monuments commemorate the heroes of a nation. Berlin's Holocaust Memorial is the exact opposite. In a newspaper interview published in 2011, renowned German writer Martin Walser called it "the first monument erected by a nation in memory of its crimes." Thousands of people visit every day. It is open to the public and can be accessed around the clock.

During World War II, the Nazis killed six million Jews - an extermination considered the worst crime in history. According to Martin Walser, the Holocaust memorial "matches the crime it commemorates: It's a gigantic monument." Amazingly, it is also "a beautiful construction, a work of art." The bright lights in the background belong to Potsdamer Platz.

In summer 1998, a model of the memorial was presented at Brandenburg Gate. As a result of a competition, four designs had been chosen, including the "field of stelae" conceived by American architect Peter Eisenman. The concept found favor with then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl who, from then on, advocated the construction of the monument.

The basic concept of the Holocaust Memorial was mooted on August 24, 1988, during a panel discussion in West Berlin. Journalist Lea Rosh proposes to erect a monument at this "site of perpetrators". Without her dedication, the monument would not exist. The picture shows Rosh delivering a speech marking the symbolic beginning of the monument's construction in January, 2000.

Erecting the enormous monument in the center of Berlin, between the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, and Potsdam Square, was a mammoth task that took several years. 2,710 concrete slabs, or stelae, were arranged symmetrically on 19,000 square meters (4.7 acres) of land. All of them have identical base measurements, but different heights. The total cost amounted to about 27 million euros.

The central monument commemorating the killing of Jews in Germany has developed into a tourist attraction. Year after year, hundreds of thousands of visitors dip into the sea of cement pillars - mostly young people from all over the world. The Holocaust Memorial is one of the most visited sites in Germany's capital.

The monument's information and musem center is located underneath the memorial and complements the abstract form of remembrance represented by the monument. The permanent exhibition gives names and faces to the victims, portraying the fate of individuals and their families, their lives, their suffering, their deaths. Drastic images are rare - the horrors can be imagined in the visitor's mind.

The deeper visitors enter the rippling maze, the stronger their feeling of existential loneliness: they don't know where to go. Although in the center of Berlin, they are far, far away from everything. All of a sudden, one gets an eerie feeling of loneliness, of desertion and threat. Such was probably the experience made by most of the victims during the Holocaust - albeit much more terrifying.

The Memorial's architect, Peter Eisenman (82), is delighted that his monument has been so well received. Children play hide-and-seek here, young people take "selfies" and couples kiss - he likes it all. He didn't want to create a "sacred place", he says. He is also pleased with the abstract nature of the monument: "You're neither reminded of a death camp, nor of anything equally horrible."

"You can't arrange the way people remember the Holocaust," says Eisenman. Some bring flowers, some pray, some sit on the slabs. Playing, laughing, contemplating: in Berlin everyone can make up their own mind about how they want to commemorate. That many visitors are clueless about the Holocaust does not bother Eisenman. The monument is always open, and free - as is remembrance.