Cultural Historical Centre in Vreden
- Sabine Drey
Located close to the border between Germany and the Netherlands, the flat Westmünsterland region is veined with numerous streams and rivers. One of them is the River Berkel; alongside the river's floodplain, a new cultural history centre has recently been built in the medieval core of the little town of Vreden. This elongated building continues the small-scale of the existing development along the old town walls. The south front faces towards the water meadow, parts of it stand on piles in the water of the city moat, which runs parallel to the river. On the opposite side a striking end building addresses a public square and the municipal public library that stands diagonally opposite. In their design Pool Leber Architekten were confronted with the task of unifying existing buildings from different eras under a single roof. On the site, as well as the two buildings of the Regional History Museum, which date from the 1970s and 1980s and today house the museum offices and the city and regional archive, there was also a poorhouse dating from the 16th century and a gunpowder tower erected in the 14th century, the town's oldest profane building. The architects connected these existing buildings, added a new museum, and restored the listed medieval buildings, making them into a part of the exhibition on cultural history. The uniform cladding of coal-fired brickwork makes a single entity of the old and the new museum. Elements of the existing fabric such as cornices or pilasters, interpreted in a new way, surface at various places. The functions are subtly distinguished from each other by the use of different roof forms and projections, but also by the variations in the colour of the bricks produced by firing them at different temperatures.
