These were some of the most evil 11 acres in Germany, a place where Nazi leaders hatched plans to terrorize millions as casually as you might send an email. Heinrich Himmler had an office there. So did Adolf Eichmann, the "architect of the Holocaust." It was there that, in a matter of months, German democracy began to crumble.

Sixty-five years on, Berlin has transformed the Topography of Terror, a cluster of buildings that housed the Gestapo, the SS, and other police agencies from 1933 to 1945, into an exhibition space trained on the elaborate workings and aftermath of the Third Reich. The center opens this week. It's the site's first permanent landmark, after more than 20 years of fits and starts, and the problem it confronts is a vexing one for architects: How do you document evil without building a monument to it?

Ursula Wilms with Heinle, Wischer und Partner has designed an anti-monument of sorts. A box ensconced in a gunmetal gray skin, it crouches low to the earth, ghost-like, practically fading into the Berlin landscape. Save a reflecting pool in the inner courtyard, it's minimal to the point of being utilitarian, and that's precisely the point. There's nothing to consecrate, no one to adulate, nothing to be proud of. In the great tradition of Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial, it exists for the sake of remembering.

Wilms's design is not the first. Berlin scrapped Swiss architect Peter Zumthor's plans to plant a structure on the old Gestapo headquarters after $18 million was spent on construction, partly because of budget overruns and partly, one suspects, because the design had some powerful detractors. One member of the German government's media and culture department called it, rather disparagingly, a "very complicated and a very artificial plan."

Until now, visitors to the Topography of Terror snaked along a makeshift outdoor exhibit with informational placards thrown up here and there. The SS and Gestapo buildings were badly damaged in the war then razed (though some scraps remain and have been incorporated into an informal walking tour). Over the years, the site has been both home to construction companies and a place to practice for your driver's license. The Berlin Wall rose, then fell, just feet away.

Berlin has done an excellent job commemorating the victims of Nazi Germany, unlike some cities (subscription required). Daniel Libeskind unveiled his Jewish Museum Berlin in 2001, and Peter Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe opened four years later. But architecture for perpetrators is in many ways a trickier feat. Wilms's design manages to point at a dark period of history without prettying it up.

[Photos courtesy of the Topography of Terror]