New season for an old building: Wintercircus competition win, Ghent, Belgium by Atelier Kemp Thill.

The Dutch practice, Atelier Kemp Thill, has won an international competition to rejuvenate the Wintercircus Mahy in Ghent. The proposals will create a multi-function cultural centre that will include: a rock concert venue, the new home of the ViAA (Flemish Institute for Archive of the audio -visual heritage) Luisterpunt, a library for the visually impaired, and i-Cubes, a centre for start-up IT firms. The building was formally home to a circus, then later a car show-room before falling into disuse. The new proposals seek to restore the existing structure using only the minimum of technically necessary changes, with a view to allowing the building's rich history to seep from the very fabric. A central feature of the proposal is the “Magic Curtain” essentially a curtain track offering the possibility to darken the space, change backdrops to various events and create a surface to project upon. The project already sounds like fun! Atelier Kemp Thill.worked with Ghent based architect aNNo architecten. To Waalse Krook.