Documentation Centre in Hinzert

After the Second World War, a small cemetery was the only remaining token of the concentration camp that once existed here. An architectural competition was held, therefore, to create a centre to document the events of this place. The architects’ winning scheme proposed the creation of a building and exhibition that form a single whole. The expressive structure, with its skin of preoxidized steel, opens in a glazed facade at the end facing the former camp. Printed on the glass is a historical photo of the prisoners’ quarters, which thus seem to be overlaid on the landscape outside. The self-supporting skin of the building consists of more than 3,000 different triangular steel panels. These were welded together in a workshop to form 12 large elements that were then assembled on site. The angles between the individual panels were calculated to ensure that the elements would have an adequate structural height and that the entire construction would form a rigid folded plate. Based on various prototypes, the doors and windows were designed in such a way that they could be integrated in the facade. The internal spaces are also dominated by walls and soffits in a triangulated wood-panel construction. Along the sides of the building, the external and internal skins are to a great extent discrete structures, with ancillary functions, archives and reading recesses housed in the space between the two.