One of the oldest civil buildings of the German City of Braunschweig, the so called Jakobkemenate (about 1250), because situated next to a former pilgrim´s chapell on the  St.Jacobus Way to Santiago de Compostella, was destroyed in great parts during World War II.

With the aim to reconstruct the cultural monument as a cultural center the ruin was bought by the local Prüsse Foundation . Together with the local OM Architects Jörg Plickat got the commission to develop in co-opereration with the cultaral heritage protection of the city a concept of a high-level reconstruction.

The process to join the creative ideas of the three involved parties was not easy. Many ideas had to be changed or given up, but finally there was found this outstandng solution: The completely destroyed front building was reconstructed in the old dimensions, but transformed into a sculptural architecture with a corten steel surface, connected to the remained ruin with a middle part of glas. To make the connection between the old and the new part evident, the 800 years old part got also a roof from corten.

Orientated on the medieval system to protect the gates of cities and churches with nailed metal sheets Jörg Plickat develloped specific to this project a thermic move-able nailed corten steel surface for the facades and the roofs fixed on a specially constructed substructure with thousands of nails.Based on this system the surface design was created together with the architects and then steel surfaces were realized by Jörg Plickat

Related to the central theme of the building , the connectiion of old and new Jörg Plickat created two 8,6 m corten steel sculptures - based on a composition of medivial und modern architectonical elements - installed in front of the central glas facade  of the building.

The exceptional project of the Jakobkemenate with the unusual connection of medieval architecture and corten steel received postive critcs not only in German but also in European media. The Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung compared the Kemenate with the reconstruction of the Braunschweig castle and gave a compliment to the Kemenate.  The Swiss Website “Worldarchitekts.com” declared the Kemenate as “Building of the Week”. German famous architecture critics Dieter Bartetzko lauded the reconstruction of the Kemenate in the Feuilleton of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and called the manner of behavior with the historical remains exemplary(FAZ 15.6.2007) Pressetexte.