Little Mehrin (Malý Mehrin)

Little Mehrin is the launchpad for the Mehrin Moravian Jewish Museum.

This cultural-educational heritage institute, located in Brno at 14 Vídeňská Street, is run by the Mehrin Endowment Fund, and is organising exhibitions, meetings, and discussions with people who have something to contribute on the topic of Jewish Moravia. It operates as a launchpad for the forthcoming Mehrin Moravian Jewish Museum, whose future form has now been decided by architectural competition.

Four leading studios submitted designs for this international competition to create a museum space: Bjarke Ingels Group (DK), MVRDV (NL), Cino Zucchi Architetti (IT), and Kengo Kuma & Associates (JP). The nine-member jury, headed by Czech architect Josef Pleskot, finally announced, by unanimous decision, the winner to be the Japanese architect, whose design they believed offered the “greatest openness in content and form” – thereby most accurately satisfying the expectations of the client.
In the rooms on Vídeňská Street you will find a permanent exhibition showing, among other items, several large-format visualisations of Kengo Kuma’s design and his 3D model. You can also see the architect in conversation, recorded before the opening night of the exhibition displaying the competing designs at Brno’s Architecture Gallery, where he says why he chose this design for Brno, and speaks more generally about the functions museums should fulfilling in the 21^st century. The conversation is conducted in English and subtitled in Czech.

The exhibition space – approx. 200 square metres over two floors – is gradually being reconstructed under the direction of architect Radim Horák from the architectural studio KAMKAB!NET.