NATIONAL MUSEUM KAMP VUGHT MONUMENT

As my intrest grew in the memorial buildings across the world for wars and particulaly the jewish holocaust victims and buildings build as memorial to them i came acoss this building designed by claus en kaan which is a national museum for kamp vught monument.

Not much is left of the Vught World War II concentration camp but a small piece of ground with the remains of the crematorium. These remnants stand more or less in the shadow of the maximum security prison built in the grounds of the former camp. Claus en Kaan were asked to design an entrance pavilion. The building, which contains exhibition space and offices for the foundation marks the entrance to the camp in the form of a screen. The façade is made out of bands of thin terracotta material, which alternate with heavy bricks, set back so that the space between the terracotta tiles can be filled to look like a thick joint. There are two routes through the building, one that visitors follow upon entering and the other as they leave the site. The exhibition rooms are set next to each other, without any connecting corridor.

The sequence of spaces in the museum included amemorial room with a ceiling opening which i found very intresting and ispriting as it seems like light coming from above in a spitual sense.In this space 750 plaques are monted inscribed with the dates of bith and death of those who were incarcerated here.The simplicity in the design and also the usage of simple materials and the minimal language in architecture which is seen in the slighly recessed bands of rendered brickwork to create a striped effect, the colour and degrees of permeability contribute to the expressive strenght of the building without overwhelming the visitor. i the interior anyway it has a additive assembly of larger and smaller spaces that offer two routes for the visitor a series of different architectural impressions.