Pool Leber Architekten and Bleckmann Krys Architekten have combined 14th and 16th century structures, with modern concrete and brick volumes to create the Kult museum.
The kult is a new cultural hub for the town of Vreden. It combines a museum with the cultural administration of the district, the local archives, an educational space, a city market, a shopping area and spaces for events and temporary exhibitions. The centre aims to walk the delicate line between integrating itself in the medieval heritage and establishing a contemporary landmark that actively contributes to Vreden’s cultural and social life.
Its sculpturality is directly developed from the context, extending the small-scale structure of the
housing along the ancient walls and defining the town's edge. A urban cultural route moves from the town surroundings and enters Vreden over a moat and through the kult: in its atrium the route intersects with the building's central and vertical axes, the latter leading up through a sculptural staircase into the museum areas.
Two new bodies are added to four existing ones, shaping a complex that covers a time span from the XIV century to today. To preserve the legibility of the historical layers the facades are subtly shifted and clad with local bricks softly changing in color shade. The result is a coherent ensemble that nevertheless frankly declares the juxtaposition of diverse identities, which harmoniously coexist without challenging each other.
If the outer cladding naturally blends into the rural surroundings, this is peeled away on the inside to reveal a concrete structure in raw timber texture. A contrasting character is added then by vivid yellow accents along the central backbone axis. On the first floor the central staircase leads to the secular part of the exhibition where corner windows open onto the medieval port. On the second floor, the clerical part of the museum, the stair points to two windows that display the town’s two churches, which still dominate the Vreden skyline.
