Hinzert Information Centre

On the site of a former concentration camp in Hinzert, architects Wandel Höfer Lorch + Hirsch have designed an unconventional, sculptural building that is a mixture of memorial space and exhibition venue. Like a battered reptile, the 43-metre-long structure occupies a gentle slope, rising from 2 to 7 metres in height. The all-in-one supporting structure, roof and façade consist of over 3000 different triangular plates of 12-millimetre Cor-ten steel. This reddish brown envelope encases an elongated exhibition space, a seminar room and an office, with lines of sight giving the impression of a single spatial unit. The inner skin consists of triangular birch plywood panels, to which photographs and texts have been applied using an ink jet process - like a contemporary form of fresco. The front end of the exhibition space -oriented towards the former camp- is a large window, whose rhomboid grid of steel strips evokes an oppressive sense of incarceration.