Museum and Exposition Centre / Atelier Kempe Thill

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Text description provided by the architects. Veenhuizen was founded at the beginning of the 19th century as an open reformatory for the “disorderly underclass”, with the aim to educate and re-socialise people. Soon after the opening of the institute the idealistic, progressive concept of a reformable society was left. The village was hermetically closed off from the outside world and was transformed into a prison village; voluntary confinement became imprisonment. Over the years, in the whole region around Veenhuizen, more prisons and adjoining functions were built turning a large area into a prison colony.