A Mausoleum for Aung San in Rangoon

In 1961, Burma’s prime minister U Nu approached the Israeli government for help in planning a mausoleum for General  Aung San, who had been shot dead during a cabinet meeting 14 years earlier.¹ The Israeli architect Al Mansfeld (1912–2004),­ who grew up in Berlin, was proposed for the project, for which­ he joined forces with his colleague David Yanai. However, their design never came to  fruition. In March 1962, General Ne Win took power in a coup d’état and did not continue the project as planned. Never­theless, the design for the mausoleum occupies an outstanding position within Mansfeld’s  work and demonstrates the archi­tect’s sensitivity in making the country’s cultural foundations the ­starting point of his approach.

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