Berlin: Urban Architecture and Daily Life 2009–2022 9783955535926, 9783955535919

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Berlin Urban Architecture and Daily Life Since 2009 Florian Heilmeyer, Sandra Hofmeister (Hgg.)

Berlin Urban Architecture and Daily Life Since 2009

Contents

Berlin is a Constant Construction Site

Culture and Education ○ ○ ○

 1 Floating University raumlaborberlin  2 Futurium Berlin Richter Musikowski  3 Neues Museum David Chipperfield Architects, Julian Harrap Essay From Classicism to Contem­porary Sandra Hofmeister  4 James Simon Gallery David Chipperfield Architects Berlin  5 Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts O&O Baukunst  6 Park am Gleisdreieck Atelier Loidl  7 Berlin Metropolitan School Sauerbruch Hutton Interview Matthias Sauerbruch: Experiments, Niches, and Urban Qualities  8 Arndt-Gymnasium AFF Architekten  9 Renovation of the Berlin State Library Unter den Linden hg merz  10 silent green Kulturquartier Kombinativ

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Living ○ ○ ○

 11 Wohnregal FAR frohn&rojas  12 IBeB ifau + Heide & von Beckerath  13 Am Lokdepot Robertneun Essay Berlin Building Groups: The City for Personal Use Florian Heilmeyer  14 Ausbauhaus Neukölln Praeger Richter Architekten  15 Building Group Project BIGyard zanderroth architekten  16 Glashütte Alt-Stralau Eyrich Hertweck Architekten  17 Walden 48 ARGE Scharabi, Anne Raupach Interview Tanja Lincke: Centrifugal City  18 Home on the Spree Tanja Lincke  19 Haus L Kersten + Kopp  20 Single-Family Home brandt + simon architekten Essay Giants of the 1970s Florian Heilmeyer

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Work ○ ○ ○

 21 taz Publishing House E2A Architekten  22 Axel Springer Publishing House OMA  23 Suhrkamp Publishing House Bundschuh Architekten Essay Airports and Train Stations: Re-Sorted and Re-Used Jasmin Jouhar  24 Luisenblock West Sauerbruch Hutton  25 The Box AHM Architekten  26 Office and Studio Building Ritterstrasse 8 BCO Architekturen  27 Office Expansion David Chipperfield Architects Berlin Interview David Chipperfield: In Dialogue with History  Berlin Administration Building ZRS Architekten 28 Tierpark  Ingenieure  Block Terrace House Brandlhuber+ Emde, Burlon /  29 Lobe  Muck Petzet Architekten  30 Up! Berlin Jasper Architects, Gewers Pudewill

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Appendix

Architects Imprint & Image Credits BERLIN Urban Architecture and Daily Life Since 2009

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○ Floating University raumlaborberlin Richter Musikowski ○ Futurium  Museum David Chipperfield ○ Neues 

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Architects, Julian Harrap  4 James Simon Gallery David  ­Chipperfield Architects Berlin  5 Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts  O&O Baukunst am Gleisdreieck Atelier Loidl  6 Park   7 Berlin Metropolitan School Sauerbruch  Hutton  8 Arndt-Gymnasium AFF Architekten   9 Renovation of the Berlin State Library  Unter den Linden hg merz  10 silent green Kulturquartier Kombinativ  11 Wohnregal FAR frohn&rojas  12 IBeB ifau + Heide & von Beckerath  13 Am Lokdepot Robertneun  14 Ausbauhaus Neukölln Praeger  Richter Architekten  15 Building Group Project BIGyard  zanderroth architekten  16 Glashütte Alt-Stralau Eyrich Hertweck Architekten

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48 ARGE Scharabi I Raupach ○ Walden  on the Spree Tanja Lincke ○ Home 

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Architekten Haus L Kersten Kopp Architekten Single-Family Home brandt + simon architekten taz Publishing House E2A Architekten Axel Springer Publishing House OMA Suhrkamp Publishing House  ­Bundschuh Architekten Luisenblock West Sauerbruch Hutton The Box AHM Architekten Office and Studio Building  Ritterstrasse 8 BCO Architekturen Office Expansion David Chipperfield  Architects Berlin Tierpark Berlin Administration Building  ZRS Architekten Ingenieure Lobe Block Terrace House  Brandlhuber+ Emde, Burlon /  Muck Petzet Architekten Up!  Berlin Jasper Architects, Gewers Pudewill

Berlin is a Constant Construction Site

008 BERLIN Urban Architecture and Daily Life Since 2009

Forty years after the reunification of East and West, the German capital of Berlin continues to be a multilayered landscape of disparate urban spaces, squares, and neighbourhoods, each with a strong character of their own. The diversity of narratives shaping the city’s history since industrialization is also visible in the urban space, coalescing into a unity of heterogeneous fragments. This heterogeneity makes the German capital stand out among the other metropoles of Europe. Sometimes the strands of history unexpectedly collide with great force; at other times, they merge harmoniously. For the city’s residents, these aspects are closely interwoven in their day-to-day experiences. And the cityscape is continuously changing – because Berlin is constantly being built. Some of its urban redevelopment milestones, such as the government district (Regierungsviertel) or Potsdamer Platz, planned shortly after German reunification in 1989, have long since become an integral part of the city. But the rebuilding continues, and with it, daily life and living conditions in Berlin are also changing. More than 100 years after Karl Scheffler oft-quoted phrase the city is still “damned forever to become and never to be.” Twenty years ago, Klaus Wowereit casually described Berlin in an interview as “poor but sexy”. With those words, the former Social Democratic mayor coined the German capital’s most quoted slogan. “Poor but sexy” became a leitmotif for the city. Berlin’s low rents made it attractive, drawing not only throngs of young people from all over the world but also international investors, who bought up cheap apartments and real estate with the prospect of high returns. The development of the inner-city neighbourhoods was unstoppable. Rents and land prices are skyrocketing, and the consequences of gentrification are omnipresent – a turbo-charged trend as if Berlin were rushing at breakneck speed to catch up with cities like Paris or London. The taz daily newspaper foresaw the outcome in 2018 with its provocative headline: “And Today? Rich but Boring!” Just like its heterogeneity, part of the city’s tradition is that Berlin has not only a large fan base but also prominent critics. Berlin is a Constant Construction Site Florian Heilmeyer, Sandra Hofmeister

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“But my God, what a boring, horrible city Berlin is!”, complained Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to his wife in 1874. And in 1898, Rosa Luxemburg related that “in general, Berlin has made the most unfa­ vourable impression on me: cold, tasteless, massive”. It would be easy to continue this list up to the present day. The current state of urban redevelopment also leaves ample room for criticism. All in all, the capital’s architecture of the last decades leaves one quite per­ plexed. As great as the chances and hopes for a new beginning and a bold, progressive architectural language were for many after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disillusionment runs deep. Take, for exam­ ple, the reconstruction of the City Palace on Unter den Linden: above all, it stands for a missed opportunity for contemporary archi­ tecture. Or Potsdamer Platz and its skyscrapers that are somehow too small: a carbon-copy shopping mall fostering flagrant commercialism. Many people imagined the architecture of the new German capital differently, hoping it would be more of a trailblazer in terms of design and quality. But Berlin remains a construction site. Its urban redevelopment has since reached new stages and opened new chapters. But where do we stand today? What makes Berlin’s current architecture stand out, and what qualities does it create? This book undertakes to answer these questions and takes readers on a curated tour through the jungle of contemporary architecture in Berlin. It examines the last decade in construction, taking the opening of the Neues Museum in 2009 as its starting point. The focus is not on the sheer quantity of new buildings that have popped up during this time but on a selection of unique projects that, for all their differences, stand for distinctive architectural quality. The projects demonstrate a wealth of creativity in dealing with existing architecture or the surrounding urban space. They include conversions and revitalizations of historic structures, nurturing pockets of nature in the city, and cooperative building group projects where people have joined forces to invent their own living space. Alongside iconic buildings, this volume also features hidden architectural gems contributing to Berlin’s 010 BERLIN Urban Architecture and Daily Life Since 2009

quality of life. In the essays, we visit both famous and infamous large-scale projects, such as the central railway station and the new BER airport. We delve into the long-term development of Museum Island and explore the legacy of architectural giants from the 1970s, like the International Congress Centre and the Schlangenbader Strasse apartment complex spanning the freeway. Grouping the 30 individual projects into the three chapters of “Culture and Education”, “Living”, and “Work”, we span the structures defining contemporary daily life in Berlin – even if the dividing lines between these three areas are increasingly blurred, as some of the projects show. There are flexible apartments whose floor plans could just as easily serve offices, bars, or galleries; apartments occupying an old bottle factory; and workspaces in an old warehouse and at a former East German ­department store. With the Park am Gleisdreieck, the urban park is reimagined as a new type of utilitarian landscape in the heart of ­Berlin, which perhaps best of all shows how a popular and lively meeting place can be established for contemporary society while purposefully preserving traces of the past – a bit like the ruins of the Neues Museum brought back to life. “Can we keep the quality of life while keeping rampant consumerism and investment in check? This is the type of struggle that Berlin is having with itself,” comments David Chipperfield in an interview (p. 307), summing up the current situation in the German capital. As he sees it, “the battle for these qualities is not yet lost.” This book highlights projects that are creating new qualities in the urban space and enriching everyday life in Berlin through their architecture. With the urban construction site ongoing, this will not be the final stage of the capital’s architectural evolution. Florian Heilmeyer, Sandra Hofmeister

Berlin is a Constant Construction Site Florian Heilmeyer, Sandra Hofmeister

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Culture and Education

1 Floating University raumlaborberlin ○ 2 Futurium Berlin Richter Musikowski ○ 3 Neues Museum David Chipperfield Architects, Julian Harrap ○

From Classicism to Contemporary Sandra Hofmeister 4 James Simon Gallery David Chipperfield Architects Berlin 5 Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts O&O Baukunst 6 Park am Gleisdreieck Atelier Loidl 7 Berlin Metropolitan School Sauerbruch Hutton Interview Matthias Sauerbruch 8 Arndt-Gymnasium AFF Architekten 9 Renovation of the Berlin State Library Unter den Linden hg merz 10 silent green Kulturquartier Kombinativ

Essay

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The New National Gallery (Neue National- From 2015 to 2021, the iconic building galerie, 1968) is the only structure was extensively refurbished by David ­designed by Mies van der Rohe erected Chipperfield Architects Berlin. in Germany after the Second World War.

New National Gallery Mies van der Rohe/David Chipperfield Architects Berlin

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The Julia Stoscheck Collection opened on Leipziger Strasse in the Mitte district in 2016. Contemporary media artworks

from the collection are displayed in the former Czech Cultural Center.

Julia Stoschek Collection Berlin Meyer-Grohbruegge

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The park at the Nordbahnhof S-Bahn station in Mitte opened in 2010. The five-hectare site is three meters above street level. It stretches over an area of disused railroad tracks and includes part

of the former Berlin Wall. The design by Fugmann Janotta Partner and Atelier Loegler was awarded the 2022 Carlo Scarpa Prize along with other urban landscape parks.

Park at Nordbahnhof Fugmann Janotta Partner, Atelier Loegler

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Structural design: Buro Happold Completion: 2018/2019/2021 Area: Building approx. 400 m2 Use: Culture, education

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Lilienthalstrasse 32, Kreuzberg 🌐 floating-berlin.org @floatinguniversity

raumlaborberlin

Half Planned, Half Improvised Floating University

Since 2018, Berlin’s first university built on piles has been located right across from the site of the former Tempelhof Airport airfield, nestled between sports fields and an allotment garden colony. Its architecture is as unusual as the location and the concept of the Floating University – which, as mandated by the Berlin Senate, is no longer allowed to call itself a university and has since written its name with the word crossed out. What at first glance may look like a forgotten frog pond is actually one of the rainwater retention basins built in the 1930s to drain the Tempelhof airfield during heavy rainfall. The basins still function today: when it rains, a pond forms, slowly draining into the Landwehr Canal.

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For security reasons, the site remained closed for more than 80 years; this enabled the development of a unique ecosystem with myriad plant, animal, and algae species. It is a place full of paradoxes: oddly removed from the city yet located in the city center, created by humans and reclaimed by nature, a hybrid between a dystopian vision of the future and a contemporary jungle paradise. The architecture collective raumlaborberlin has already dealt with the vast open space of Tempelhofer Feld and its possibilities for appropriation in the past. Among other things, they organized a Do-It-Yourself World Exhibition for artists there in 2012. This is also how the collective came across the rainwater basin. By 2018, they had developed a concept for its temporary use as an “offshore campus” for dialogue on the future of cities. Raumlabor invited cooperation partners, including 25 European universities, and submitted funding applications. Then began the construction of an initial basic structure comprising timber buildings, walkways, platforms, seating, and gathering areas stretching across the shallow basin. Open wooden structures, some of them with multiple levels, are supplemented with scaffolding and plastic elements as well as fabric for sun and rain protection. Half planned, half improvised, a robust raw structure was created that constantly changes according to the skills and desires of its users. Every year, new versions or interpretations of the university emerge, like a song covered by different performers. A diverse program quickly developed, featuring concerts, readings, discussions, workshops, film screenings, barbecues, dance performances, nature tours, and sports courses. A non-profit association was established to turn the temporary facility into a permanent one. In 2021, at the Architecture Biennale in Venice, Floating University received the festival’s highest award, the Golden Lion. The exemplary project shows how residual urban spaces can be conquered, activated, interpreted, and implemented in multiple ways with little intervention. Nevertheless, its future is uncertain, as the state-owned Tempelhof Projekt GmbH and the municipal district would prefer to see the temporary structures removed. Paradoxically, its success and popularity seem to be the project’s biggest threat. fh

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Site plan Scale 1:2,000

○1 Floating University raumlaborberlin

The educational campus that occupies the rainwater retention basin at the

former Tempelhof Airport is a constantly changing, do-it-yourself structure.

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For decades, the rainwater retention urban wasteland could be infused with basin lay dormant. Then a diverse group a new identity, even on a small budget. led by raumlaborberlin showed how

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Floor plans Scale 1:500

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First floor

 1 Footbridge  2 Terrace  3 Central lab  4 Bar  5 Toilets  6 Water wheel

 7 Water filtration system  8 Water basin  9 Auditorium (99 seats)

10 Floating platform stage 11 Walkway auditorium 12 Terrace 13 Storage

14 Platforms, water filtration 15 Galley 16 Self-catering kitchen 17 Storage

The Floating University hosts events exploring the future of life in the city.

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Its built structures can be quickly modified as needed.

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○1 Floating University raumlaborberlin

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Client: German Federal Real Estate Agency (BlmA), Berlin Directorate Structural design: Schüssler-Plan Ingenieursgesellschaft Landscape architecture: JUCA architecture + landscape architecture Facade design: Arup Germany Building services: GM Planen und Beraten Building physics: Müller BBM, Werner Sobek WS Green Technologies Completion: 2017 Area: 8000 m2 Use: Exhibitions, auditorium, café, shop

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Alexanderufer 2, Mitte 🌐 futurium.de @futuriumD

Richter Musikowski

Shimmering Polygon for the Future Futurium

Since the opening of Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof train station in 2006, much has been built around it, although remarkable architecture is rare. One exception is the Futurium Berlin. Behind the somewhat cryptic name is an exhibition and event space for the nearby Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The ministry uses it as a public showcase for its work and explorations of future-oriented questions, such as: How do we want to live? How will we travel? How can we survive? The new build was erected on a triangular piece of wasteland between the Ministry, the S-Bahn line to the north, and the Spree River to the south. The open architectural competition for its design was spectacularly won in 2012 by young architects Christoph Richter and Jan Musikowski, who were still research assistants at the Technical

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University in Dresden at the time. The Futurium marked the launch of their practice. In response to the anonymous environment of bland office blocks, the architects proposed an eye-catching sculptural form. Its pentagonal floor plan and multiple sloping walls make the Futurium a pleasing stranger in the landscape. The surrounding plaza adds to the sense of distance with its black asphalt pavement and pattern of bright dots, invoking an image of an extraterrestrial vessel. With its dramatic angles and gleaming silver facade, the solitaire rises to the north and south, marking its two entrances. In front of each entry is a small forecourt with a wide canopy; at the northern entrance, the overhang is an impressive 18 meters. The internal organization has been designed for maximum clarity. The foyer, cloakrooms, gift shop, café, and auditorium are located on the first floor. On the level below that is the Futurium Lab, an introverted, six-meter-high exhibition hall with dark, exposed concrete walls, a black mastic asphalt floor, and a striking coffered light ceiling. The 3,000-square-meter main hall is located on the upper level, its central development core loosely dividing the space into three areas. Increasing room heights make the angled roof form comprehensible from the inside, guiding the view to the giant panoramic windows at the end of the wall corridors. The facade on the east and west sides consists of over 8,000 square cassette elements. Under its ceramic-printed glass panes are metal reflectors, which are reflective, transparent, or translucent depending on how they are bent. The result is a multifaceted, ambiguous, and futuristic shimmering building envelope whose expression changes with the weather. To the north and south, large, dark windows are inserted above the canopies like peepholes in a telescope, maximizing the building statics: panoramic windows of 8 × 28 meters to the south and 11 × 28 meters to the north are suspended in a robust steel framework integrated into the exterior walls. The view thus becomes part of the exhibitions, placing the future-oriented topics in direct dialogue with the surrounding city. fh

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Site plan Scale 1:10,000

 1 Futurium  3 Hauptbahnhof  2 Federal Ministry Train Station of Education and Research

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Sections, floor plans Scale 1:1,000

 1 Special exhibitions  2 Storage  3 Technical room  4 Chair storage  5 Café

 6 Foyer  7 Shop  8 Cloakroom  9 Conference room 10 Deliveries

11 Event space 12 Administration 13 Permanent exhibition 14 Control room

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Client: Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz Structural design: IGB Ingenieurgruppe Bauen Technical planning & construction management, restoration: Pro Denkmal Site supervision: Lubic & Woehrlin Landscape architecture: Levin Monsigny Landschaftsarchitekten Area: 10,500 m2 Completion: 2009 Use: Permanent exhibitions, temporary exhibitions, café, bookstore

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Bodestrasse 4, Mitte 🌐 smb.museum @neuesmuseum

David Chipperfield Architects London & Berlin, Julian Harrap

Repair and Respect Neues Museum

Severely damaged by bombs during the Second World War, with some parts completely destroyed, the ruins of the Neues Museum (New Museum) were exposed to the elements for many years. In 1997, David Chipperfield Architects and Julian Harrap won the international competition to reconstruct the building, originally built in 1841–1859 according to plans by Friedrich August Stüler. The concept of the British architects aimed at repairing the parts that remained and supplementing the original sequence of rooms and original building volume with new building sections. In accordance with the Venice Charter, which has been the internationally recognized guideline for historic preservation since 1964, the historic structures were restored in their different states

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of preservation. Any gaps in the historic buildings remain recognizable as such. Complementing them are sleek, contemporary elements that do not compete with the original. This approach of respectful dialogue between old and new is most evident in the museum’s central stairwell. Exposed brick walls in the large hall were restored, and the original three-flight staircase, which had been destroyed, was recreated as a simple volume in the space. Like the new exhibition halls, it was formed from large-format precast elements made of a specially developed concrete blending white cement mixed with S ­ axon marble. The restrained contemporary additions reflect what was lost without imitating it. Touring the museum becomes a walk through history – making the Neues Museum a place of remembrance. Stüler’s fragments, the destruction during the Second World War, the new additions and, last but not least, the costly collection exhibits are all parts of a narrative, conThe post-war ruins of the historic building were exposed to the elements until the 1980s.

densed and superimposed in the museum’s rooms. With the opening of the Neues Museum in 2009, Berlin’s museum landscape repositioned itself after the fall of the Berlin Wall: collections from East and West Berlin were brought together and arranged under the roof of the Neues Museum, with 8,000 square meters of exhibition space on four levels. The Egyptian Museum and the Museum of Prehistory and Early History are now housed here, as are the papyrus and antiquities collections of the National Museums in Berlin. From the outside, the building mainly appears in the original urban context of the pre-war situation. The colonnades on the east and south sides, which were mostly intact, were restored and completed. To the west, the new James Simon Gallery translates Stüler’s classicist colonnade into slender concrete columns. Also designed by David Chipperfield Architects Berlin, the gallery fills the last remaining gap on Museum Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site. sah

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Site plan Scale 1:5,000

 1 Neues Museum  2 Alte National­­ galerie

 3 Altes Museum  4 Lustgarten

3 Neues Museum David Chipperfield Architects London & Berlin, Julian Harrap ○

 5 James Simon Gallery

 6 Pergamon ­Museum  7 Bode Museum

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Layers of history are clearly visible in the grand staircase hall of the Neues Museum. Existing elements were

restored in their respective state of preservation.

3 Neues Museum David Chipperfield Architects London & Berlin, Julian Harrap ○

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In the grand stairway hall, minimalist concrete additions are clearly recognizable. The historical drawing

depicts the original space in its eclectic splendour.

West elevation

Elevation, floor plans Scale 1:1,000

 1 Main entrance  2 Vestibule  3 Technical equipment  4 Cloakroom  5 Information  6 Museum shop  7 West entrance  8 Egyptian Tombs Room  9 Mythological Room

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10 Hypostyl 11 Void above Egyptian ­Courtyard 12 Historical Room 13 Patriotic Room 14 Void above Greek Courtyard 15 Ethnographic Room 16 Janitor

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17 Service ­entrance 18 Café 19 Vaulted Room 20 North Dome Room 21 Room of the Niobids 22 Bacchus Room 23 Roman Room

24 South Dome Room 25 Apollo Room 26 Platform above the Egyptian Courtyard 27 Stairway Hall 28 Medieval Room 29 Greek Room 30 Modern Room 31 Bernward Room

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View from the Roman Room into the South Dome Room (below). Located in the North Dome Room (right), the bust of Nefertiti is one of the museum’s main attractions.

AND EDUCATION 048 CULTURE 

3 Neues Museum David Chipperfield Architects London & Berlin, Julian Harrap ○

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View from the colonnade courtyard of the Alte Nationalgalerie to the east facade of the Neues Museum.

3 Neues Museum David Chipperfield Architects London & Berlin, Julian Harrap ○

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View across the Kupfergraben canal is at the heart of Museum Island. His to the Altes Museum, circa 1830. Karl architecture represented Prussia’s new Friedrich Schinkel’s neoclassical building educational and cultural aspirations.

From Classicism to Contem­porary Museum Island and the Cultural Heritage of the City

Sandra Hofmeister

BERLIN Urban Architecture and Daily Life Since 2009

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T the historic heart of Berlin, on the northern part of Spree Island stands a cluster of five museum buildings. Connected by gardens and colonnades, they were built over the course of a century, between 1830 and 1930. This complex, called Museum Island, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999. The buildings of the Altes Museum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, Bode Museum, and Pergamon Museum are home to the collections of the National Museums in Berlin. Their highlights include the bust of Nefertiti and the ancient Pergamon Altar, German Romantic paintings by Caspar David Friederich, and Impressionist works by Édouard Manet.

Model showing Museum Island with the Lustgarten park. The five museum

buildings and the visitor centre form a historically evolved ensemble.

Museum Island’s 8.6-hectare complex, its architecture, and art collections bear witness to Berlin’s cultural identity and its history. Shifts, breaks, and realignments mark individual chapters of this history, which is by no means complete today. They show the claims to prestige by Prussian kings and German emperors, traces of the Second World War and the post-war era in East Germany, and current efforts to reunite cultural heritage after German reunification and to continue this heritage through modernization. The master plan of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation from 1999 set the goal of restoring all of Museum Island’s buildings. They will also be connected by an Archaeological Promenade, which will direct streams of visitors from the central entrance building to the various museums. So far, three of the five museum buildings have been renovated. For the most part, their collections, which were distributed among different locations on both sides of the Berlin Wall after the Second World War, have been reunited once again. Museum Island concentrates Berlin’s cultural history like no other place in the city. 054 CULTURE AND EDUCATION

Antiquity on the Spree: View of the Alte Nationalgalerie and its colonnaded courtyard, with the Neues Museum in the background. Photo circa 1881.

Museum Island and the Cultural Heritage of the City Sandra Hofmeister

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Schinkel’s Embrace of Antiquity and Prussia’s Educational Ideals It all began with the Altes Museum (Old Museum) – Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s antiquity-inspired building that forms the nucleus of Museum Island. Completed under Friedrich Wilhelm III in 1830 and called the “Königliches Museum” (Royal Museum), it was the first museum in Prussia open to the public. Schinkel’s monument to art rises from its lofty pedestal along the boulevard Unter den Linden. The main facade, lined by Ionic columns, opens onto the Lustgarten park and faces the City Palace (Stadtschloss). The positioning of the building opposite the palace of the Hohenzollern royal family, which the museum building greets with its grand outdoor staircase, as well as the nearby Zeughaus armory building and the ornate Berlin cathedral, signalled the new self-image of the Prussian kings. Along with politics, the military, and the church, art was now also part of their worldly power. The central rotunda of the Altes Museum continues to serve as a model for numerous museum buildings to this day. Inside, precious artworks from all epochs were displayed to the general public to educate them on the kingdom’s intellectual heritage. The neoclassical building was severely damaged during the Second World War and, from 1958 onwards, was rebuilt to house contemporary East German art. After German reunification, the architects Hilmer & Sattler and Albrecht won the 1993 competition for the building’s complete reconstruction. The coffered ceiling of the rotunda and the central staircase were restored, and the original collection of antiquities is now presented in a chronologically organized tour. In 2006, demolition works began on the Palace of the Republic (Palast der Republik). Opened in 1976, it housed the East German Parliament and hosted the party congresses of the reigning Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) for decades. In its place on Unter den Linden, the former City Palace was rebuilt, including its historic facade. Today, Schinkel’s Altes Museum stands in a new urban context that visually restores the original historical situation. It also gives Schinkel’s neoclassical building at the Lustgarten a new partner in the form of the Humboldt Forum, which opened in 2020 in the rooms of the City Palace. Colonnades on the Spree In 1841, Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV decreed that the entire Spree Island should be developed for art and science. The rulers of the Wilhelmine era and the German Empire stuck to this plan – until the newest historical building on the island, the Pergamon Museum, opened in 1930.

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The first stage of the island’s development was shaped by one of ­Schinkel’s students, Friedrich August Stüler, and his idea of a neoclassical Arcadia. The Neues Museum (New Museum) was built according to Stüler’s plans and opened in 1859 as the second museum on Spree Island. Johann Heinrich Strack, another student of Schinkel, completed the Nationalgalerie to the east after Stüler’s death. Its programmatic gable inscription “Der deutschen Kunst” (“To German Art”) and the building’s proud temple architecture reflect the new patriotic self-­confidence of the Wilhelmine era. The Nationalgalerie opened in 1876 on the birthday of Kaiser W ­ ilhelm I. After German reunification and the merging of Berlin’s museum landscape, the building was renamed Alte National­galerie (Old National Gallery) to avoid confusion with the Neue National­ galerie (New National Gallery) designed by Mies van der Rohe at the

The former Kaiser Friedrich Museum is now called the Bode Museum. The magnificent neo-baroque structure is

at the northern tip of Museum Island. Photo postcard, after 1930.

Museum Island and the Cultural Heritage of the City Sandra Hofmeister

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Kulturforum in West Berlin after the war. Today, the main building of the Nationalgalerie, whose extensive collection is distributed among other buildings on Museum Island, houses about 2,000 paintings and just as many sculptures. In front of the building is a collonaded courtyard, which flanks the Spree River to the east and leads from there to the Neues Museum. While Schinkel transferred the educational ideals developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt into the neoclassical architecture of the Altes Museum, the later buildings on Museum Island are characterized by eclectic historicism. This makes itself felt in the palatial architecture of the Bode Museum, for example, in the elements from different eras,

The colonnade of the Alte Nationalgalerie once included a kiosk for refreshments with seating. Photo circa 1930.

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from the Renaissance to the Wilhelminian neo-baroque. The circular building opened on the northern tip of the island in 1904, known initially as the Kaiser Friedrich Museum and renamed after its founder Wilhelm von Bode in 1956. With the Pergamon Museum as the last building block, the historical programme of Museum Island was completed in 1930. The monumental and richly decorated plinth building along the Kupfergraben canal is accessed by a bridge and has been undergoing renovation since 2012, according to the plans of Cologne architect ­Oswald Mathias Ungers. Reunited and Reconstructed After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz) faced the challenge of bringing together the national collections and modernizing the historic buildings on Museum Island. Neues Museum, however, posed a particular challenge. The building had been heavily damaged by bombs during the Second World War and destroyed in parts. It was not until the 1980s that the ruin was secured. In 1997, David Chipperfield and Julian Harrap won the advisory procedure of the international competition for the museum’s reconstruction. They implemented a concept of critical reconstruction that rehabilitates the historic structures in their respective state of preservation from a historic preservation perspective and adds new, restrained elements in a contemporary architectural language (p. 40ff.). The Neues Museum reopened in 2009. Chipperfield and his team in Berlin also designed the sixth and newest building on Museum Island, the James Simon Gallery (p. 63). The architects developed their first concept for the gallery in 2001, but it was shelved due to financing hurdles. Planning was resumed in 2007 and adapted to the Museum Island master plan, which has since been expanded. ­Chipperfield’s addition at the Kupfergraben fits into the overall ensemble on Museum Island, on the site of a former packing yard. Serving as the central entrance building, the James Simon Gallery will connect with all the Museum Island buildings via the planned Archaeological Promenade, making it easier for visitors to find their way around. The new building picks up central motifs from the architecture of its historical neighbours. Standing on a high pedestal above the Spree, its main entrance opens with a large flight of steps and forms a courtyard on its eastern side facing the Neues Museum, complementing the garden landscape on the island. The architecture of the James Simon Gallery reinterprets Stüler’s colonnades for the present. The fluted Ionic columns become slender white concrete columns, lining the walkways at street level and the base level above the Spree River. Museum Island and the Cultural Heritage of the City Sandra Hofmeister

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Historic glamour: The Schlüterhof courtyard of the City Palace has been largely reconstructed. Today, the once

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destroyed baroque complex presents itself as a contemporary exercise in stylistic revival.

Noble Narratives With the opening of the Humboldt Forum, the broad spectrum of the Museum Island will be complemented by parts of the collections of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art. In 2003, the German Bundestag decided to rebuild Hohenzollern Palace, which had been damaged during the Second World War and then razed by the East German government in the 1950s. Today, its baroque courtyards and facades are standing once again, rebuilt to their historical appearance. They illustrate an approach to history that could hardly be more contradictory to Chipperfield’s efforts on Museum Island: while history is visible at the Neues Museum, replete with gaps and fissures, it is reinvented at the Humboldt Forum. The palace facade on Unter den Linden stages a fake idyll that does not allow for moments of remembrance, as if the Second World War and East Germany had never existed.

Museum Island and the Cultural Heritage of the City Sandra Hofmeister

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Client: Stiftung Preussischer Bodestrasse, Mitte Kulturbesitz 🌐 smb.museum Structural design: IGB Ingenieurgruppe @staatlichemuseenzuberlin Bauen Building physics: Müller-BBM Area: 10,900 m2 Completion: 2018 Opening: 2019 Use: Museum entrance, auditorium, café, ticket desk & museum shop, temporary exhibitions

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David Chipperfield Architects Berlin

New Gateway to Museum Island James Simon Gallery

This new entrance building and visitor center on Museum Island is named for the entrepreneur James Simon (1851–1932). The German art patron and financier of archaeological excavations donated and permanently loaned to the national museums in Berlin some 10,000 objects from his private collection of art and antiquities, including the famous Nefertiti bust. The narrow, cubic structure bordering the Kupfergraben, an arm of the Spree River, now complements the historical ensemble of buildings on Museum Island. It previously served as the entrance to the Pergamon Museum and is connected to the Neues Museum by an underground walkway. When the master plan from 1999 is fully implemented, this

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so-called Archaeological Promenade will extend from the Bode Museum to the Altes Museum. The James Simon Gallery will connect four of the five buildings located between the Lustgarten park, Kupfergraben canal, and Spree River. The design reinterprets architectural elements and historical motifs from the neighboring museum buildings. The James Simon Gallery continues the high base of the Pergamon Museum as a 100-meter-long monolithic plinth along the Kupfergraben canal. On top of that is a colonnade with 92 filigree columns along the entire length. Situated well above the water, the new walkway doubles as the roof of the observation terrace on the base level. It looks across to the Schlossbrücke (palace bridge) and the dome of the Humboldt Forum. On its narrow main side facing Bodestrasse, the building opens with a large, inviting flight of steps, again taking up the neoclassical colonnade motif from its neighbor. The slender pillars in precast concrete translate the historic column architecture of Friedrich August Stüler into the present day. The building by David Chipperfield Architects Berlin closes the last gap on Museum Island, which is on the Unesco World Heritage List. A building by the Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel previously occupied the site but was demolished in 1938. The James Simon Gallery also derives its character as a thoughtful addition to Museum Island’s historic ensemble from the natural stone aggregates in the concrete. They intentionally reference the tonality and material variety of the sandstone, limestone, and plaster facades of the historic museum buildings. In contrast, the interiors seem quietly reserved with their smooth in-situ concrete walls. sah

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Am Kupfergraben: The slender concrete colonnades of the James Simon Gallery

fill the space high above the banks of the Kupfergraben.

Site plan Scale 1:5,000

4 James Simon Gallery David Chipperfield Architects Berlin ○

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Grand entrance: As the entrance building for Museum Island, the James

Simon Gallery welcomes the public with its broad flight of stairs.

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 1 Foyer  2 Tickets  3 Walkway to ­Pergamon ­Museum

 4 Cafe, restaurant  5 Terrace

 6 Cloakroom  7 Auditorium  8 Museum shop

 9 Temporary ­exhibition

Minimalist exposed concrete walls alternate with dark wood panelling inside the visitor center.

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The latest new building on Museum Island extends the colonnade on Bodestrasse. It transposes the fluted

columns of the historical structure into filigree concrete supports.

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Client: Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development, Building and Housing Structural design: fd-ingenieure Frank Dröse Completion: 2018 Area: 16,200 m2 Use: Stage, cafeteria, dressing rooms, props, administration, workshop, library, and rooms for seminars, rehearsals, exercise

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Zinnowitzer Strasse 11, Mitte 🌐 hfs-berlin.de @HochschulefuerSchauspielkunst ErnstBusch

O&O Baukunst

Please Move to Mitte Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts Somewhat set back from Zinnowitzer Strasse in the Mitte district, the stage tower of the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art rises like a huge wooden box. Amidst the anonymous glass and metal facades of investor-financed buildings near the headquarters of the German Intelligence Service (BND), this structure seems almost provocative with its improvised appearance. Until 2018, the theatre academy’s four departments – acting, puppetry, directing, and choreography – were spread out among its various branches in the district of Niederschöneweide. To facilitate interdisciplinary studies, the Berlin Senate and the theatre school decided back in 2006 to consolidate all disciplines at a single campus. But when controversies over rising costs and other proposed locations continued to delay the start of construction, students staged a protest to voice their preference. The creative campaign with the slogan “Bitte

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nach Mitte” (Please move to Mitte) was successful. In 2014, construction could finally begin on the former central workshops of East Berlin’s state-owned theatres. Architects Ortner & Ortner Baukunst planned the renovation and conversion of the functional building from the 1950s. The design included moving the main entrance to the front of the building so that it faces south, as well as adding two new buildings. To the left of the main structure is the cafeteria, housed in a single-story cube wrapped in a curtain wall of white corrugated, perforated sheeting. Hugging the facade on the right is a stage tower, 24 meters tall and clad in vertical larch wood slats. Translucent polycarbonate panels provide an inner thermal layer. Directly behind the panels is a stage perimeter serving the two studio stages, each of which seats 100 spectators. At night, when the cube is lit from the inside, the backstage action becomes a shadow play for passers-by. The existing building from the 1950s is a steel skeleton construction. The building once housed opera workshops.

The tower’s raw timber shell continues inside the original building, which was gutted down to its basic structure. The walls are plastered only up to a height of 2.30 meters and painted with panel varnish. Above that, the raw concrete reveals old paint and mortar residues and is plastered only at joints and screw connections. Glazed corridor walls along the wide hallway provide fascinating behind-the-scenes views of the workshops and puppetry props area. A new sculptural staircase in exposed concrete leads to the upper floors, where a two-story library, classrooms, and 20 rehearsal stages are located. Spaces for movement and dance are on the third floor. Since those rooms are required to be at least 7 meters high, the old shed roof was replaced by a steel structure with a flat roof. The budget did not allow for extensive outdoor landscaping, so the budding actresses, directors, and puppeteers lent a hand. Now lettuce, arugula, and cress grow in open ground around the academy building. bz

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Site plan Scale 1:10,000

5 Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts O&O Baukunst ○

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The new 24-meter-high stage tower is clad in a shell of larch wood slats. Sketch by Manfred Ortner.

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 1 Entrance  2 Foyer  3 Kitchen  4 Cafeteria  5 Cloakroom / box office

 6 Studio stage  7 Props  8 Props  9 Puppetry props 10 Administration 11 Workshop

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Client: State of Berlin, represented by Grün Berlin Completion: 2014 Area: Approx. 30 ha Use: City park

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Möckernstrasse 26, Kreuzberg/ Schöneberg/Mitte 🌐 gruen-berlin.de/gleisdreieck @parkamgleisdreieck

Atelier Loidl

Keep on the Grass Park am Gleisdreieck

The Park am Gleisdreieck was created on a former railroad site covering more than 30 hectares in the districts of Kreuzberg, Schoneberg, and Mitte. The triangular junction was once an extensive industrial landscape of train tracks, sheds, warehouses, and workshops. During the Second World war, the two train stations connected by the junction were destroyed, ending the site’s use. In the divided city after the war, birch trees, bushes, and grasses grew over the tracks; allotment gardens and community clubs nestled at the edges. Only after pressure from several citizens’ initiatives did the Senate decide at the turn of the millennium to turn the area into a park. The competition was won in 2006 by the landscape planners from Atelier Loidl in Berlin with a

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concept that was radical at the time: instead of covering up the industrial past with pretty landscaping, they made the wild overgrowth the starting point for their redesign. The urban park they designed respects and integrates what already exists, standing out from the green urban oases of the past. At the Park am Gleisdreieck, the landscape is not intended to invite strolling observers but active users. To serve this purpose, the landscape must be robust: all new elements are made of durable materials such as timber, concrete, metal, and asphalt. Particularly hardy vegetation was planted. The architectural and technical fixtures and the new plants are based on what already existed. Many remains of the area’s former use were carefully preserved in the new urban landscape and are now scattered around the park as if by chance: old tracks, paved areas, decaying brick sheds, and rusty buffer stops. A grove that has grown wild for over 50 years has been only lightly pruned and is now fenced off as an attraction. The asphalt paths and most of the newly installed furniture lend themselves well to anything with wheels. The new network of paths makes the park not only easily accessible but also a hub in the city’s bicycle network. The park also provides various routes with relatively few intersections to accommodate different speeds of through traffic and recreational traffic in the park. Likewise, activity areas are inconspicuously sorted according to noise: children’s playgrounds and sports fields are located mainly around the elevated train, which rattles loudly across the park to the north. To the south, the expansive sunbathing meadows are surprisingly quiet. This unbiased appreciation of the existent and its imaginative continuation and completion make the Park am Gleisdreieck an exceptional place in the city – where both the qualities and the magic of the old wasteland can still be felt. fh

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 1 Mendelssohn-­ S-Bahn station Bartholdy-Park  5 Yorckstrasse metro ­station metro station  2 Gleisdreieck  6 Am Möckernmetro station kiez building  3 German Museum group of Technology  7 Am Lokdepot  4 Yorckstrasse apartment

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building  8 Recreation and sport area  9 Playground 10 Schöneberg Meadow 11 “Gardens in the Garden”, café

12 Allotment ­colony 13 Beach volleyball 14 Skate Park ­Berlin, café in the ­signal box

15 Sports field with stands 16 Kreuzberg Meadow 17 Intercultural gardens 18 Dora Duncker Park

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Throughout the large park, traces of its historical use were preserved and complemented by contemporary uses. These are arranged according to noise

6 Park am Gleisdreieck Atelier Loidl ○

level, alternating peace and quiet with loud and lively areas.

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6 Park am Gleisdreieck Atelier Loidl ○

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Client: Berlin Metropolitan School Structural design: Andreas Külich Ingenieurbüro für Tragwerksplanung Landscape architecture: KRE_TA Kretschmer Tauscher Landschafts­ architekten Interior design, library: Gonzalez Haase Completion: 2020 Area: 3,650 m2 Use: Auditorium, library, classrooms, group rooms

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Linienstrasse 122, Mitte 🌐 metropolitanschool.com

Sauerbruch Hutton

The Wonderful Lightness of Timber Construction Berlin Metropolitan School

The Berlin Metropolitan School is an English-speaking private school founded in 2004. Serving more than 1,000 students ranging from preschool to 12th grade, the campus is located in a four-wing complex of GDR prefabricated slab buildings, which was inserted into the existing building stock between Torstrasse and Linienstrasse around a spacious inner courtyard in 1987 – two years before the fall of the German Democratic Republic. The constant increase in demand made it necessary to expand the campus. Despite available space in the inner courtyard, the school did not want to build there, as the students regularly use it during their breaks.

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Sauerbruch Hutton proposed a relatively small four-story addition at the south end of the campus, utilizing a building gap and adding a one to two-story roof structure on top of the three existing wings to the north, west, and south. This created a total of 3,650 additional square feet which now house an auditorium, library, new classrooms, and group rooms. The roof structure was built in timber. Thanks to its low weight, no changes were needed to the statics of the existing buildings to accommodate the load transfer. Instead, the architects made use of a special feature of the slab construction system: The foundations under the cross walls are the same as under the load-bearing walls, meaning the former are oversized. This made it possible for the non-load-bearing walls to completely absorb the loads from the roof structure, sparing the need for elaborate reinforcements. The concept combines the lightness of timber construction with the stability of East German prefab slab construction. The timber construction also offered advantages: Not only could much of it be prefabricated, it could also be installed in three phases during school operations, thanks to the low noise and dust levels. Narrow vertical copper bands wrap around all the new buildings, giving them a flowing, dynamic exterior. The fact that the elevations lean in slightly towards the courtyard contributes to this effect. As a result, the buildings now look like a group of adults standing around a group of children playing, looking slightly downward – a protective gesture that makes the large courtyard feel more intimate. Inside, the wood remains mostly visible, with a white varnish on the load-bearing parts and exterior walls. The various room types and sizes provide new areas for gathering, retreat, independent learning, and group work. The two-story auditorium under the roof of the extension to the south is particularly impressive: with a span of 16 meters plus a gallery, the hall can hold up to 1,260 people. An impressive spatial effect is created by the triple-bent wooden beams of the open roof truss, reminiscent of an upside-down boat. The school holds all its main assemblies and events in the new auditorium, including the graduation ceremonies – which, thanks to the new construction, have now found a worthy architectural setting. fh

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The urgently needed school building extension is a timber structure that sits atop the existing prefabricated buildings. Thanks to the extension’s low

selfweight, the existing structure did not require additional reinforcement.

Site plan Scale 1:10,000

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All major school events are now held in the extension’s two-story auditorium with its eye-catching roof structure.

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Matthias Sauerbruch in Conversation with Sandra Hofmeister

Experiments, Niches, and Urban Qualities 099

For decades, Matthias Sauerbruch has been campaigning for a comprehensive approach to sustainable architecture and urban planning in Berlin. In 1989, he and Luisa Hutton founded their practice Sauerbruch Hutton in London and relocated to Berlin in 1993. Their expertise includes building in existing structures and the densification of urban spaces. With a team of 120 employees at its offices in Berlin-Mitte, Sauerbruch Hutton designs projects that enhance urban qualities and propose targeted solutions that enable architecture to respond to the climate emergency.

You have been observing Berlin’s architecture for several decades. What is your assessment? I have known West Berlin since my days as a university student, and after a 12-year interlude in London, I moved back to the reunited city in 1993. The years immediately after the fall of the Wall were fantastic – it was a very dynamic era during which a lot was happening simultaneously. The mood of liberation was palpable and contagious. A plethora of pop-up activities took place in vacant apartments and shop spaces, and there was an incredible number of initiatives overall – also by architects in the east and west of the city. Initially, everyone seemed to be participating in the lively discussion about the city’s future. Then the discourse became more ideologically charged, and the policy of critical reconstruction, pushed by then-Senate Building Director Hans Stimmann, stifled a lot of innovation. Where do we stand in urban planning today? The last Senate Building Director, Regula Lüscher, tried to establish a new and different culture, stimulat100 CULTURE AND EDUCATION

ing an open discussion about urban planning and architectural issues. She then institutionalized that into a new building board. But in general, Berlin has fallen short of the possibilities we might have wished for right after the fall of the Wall. When did disillusionment set in? There were various economic crises at the beginning of the 21st century. Berlin also had to overcome them – for example, several real estate bubbles, where some people lost a lot of money. The international architectural firms that had settled in Berlin after the fall of the Wall gradually moved away. This was partly because – how shall I put this – they were perhaps not received as they had wished. Berlin became much more local. Joy or frustration – which outweighs the other in your personal balance sheet? Joy, of course, always. It was a privilege to experience this unique time after the fall of the Wall. And fortunately, you forget the frustration soon enough. You can grow from resistance – that also applies to our

architecture practice. During the Stimmann era, we expanded our presence elsewhere because we could hardly get a foot in the door in Berlin during that time. As a consequence, we are now quite internationally positioned. In retrospect, our dilemma at that time also had a positive effect.

For many years, you have advocated the respectful treatment of the building fabric, densification, and a comprehensive approach to sustainability in architecture. Where does Berlin stand on these points today? Berlin still has a lot of gaps that can be filled. From what I gather, existing

The Sauerbruch Hutton office is in Lehrter Straße: the architects have extended the listed brick building in Moabit with a roof extension.

Matthias Sauerbruch in Conversation with Sandra Hofmeister

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buildings are being demolished to a lesser extent than in other cities. London, for example, is much more radical and uncompromising. Our first competition in London was in 1989 for Paternoster Square, right by St Paul’s Cathedral. At that time, we proposed preserving and converting an existing building from the 1960s. Instead, the entire neighborhood was mercilessly demolished and replaced with the kitsch type of architecture favored by Prince Charles. Nevertheless, building in existing structures has accompanied us continuously. It was crucial for our first realized project in Berlin: The highrise for the headquarters of the GSW housing association in Kreuzberg, and it is still central to our work today. Berlin lends itself to this approach because the city is like an open history book. If you walk attentively through the city, you will find many traces, such as sidewalks, street signs, or half houses, which reveal breaks in the cityscape and make history tangible. They do not necessarily make the city more beautiful, and there is a lot of confusion and chaos in some places. But in my opinion, this is precisely one of the special qualities that Berlin still possesses today. It is an important task for architecture to preserve this historicity and to continue to make it visible. More than 100 years ago, the writer Theodor Fontane noted that, as soon as you enter Berlin, it’s over with elegance. Does this also ring true today? 102 CULTURE AND EDUCATION

Berlin is young and a bit like an American city. Like Chicago or New York, Berlin also experienced a boom in the late 19th century, which can still be felt today. However, there is a lack of both cultural and economic substance on the Spree; the city doesn’t have much of a breeding ground, so to speak. There are no elites in any sense of the word. At one point, there was Prussian nobility, but today there is barely a trace of that. It is different in England or France, where the “grandes familles” still exist. In Berlin, on the other hand, there is relatively little class difference in this respect. On the one hand, this has advantages. Those who absolutely want to get to the top have it much easier in Berlin than in Paris or London, where certain thresholds cannot be exceeded. On the other hand, however, Berlin lacks the mature culture that has been established in other cities over centuries.

the discourse in Berlin has rather lost interest.

One of the city’s most symbolic locations is Alexanderplatz; it represents its history and transformation. Sauerbruch Hutton is planning a high-rise building there. What will distinguish the square in the future? Alexanderplatz is one of the most urban places in Berlin, and it will be even more so in the future. What also distinguishes the site is that East German architecture is still so present there today – in contrast to the Palace of the Republic and other places in the city center, where these architectural traces have been erased as far as possible. The characteristic GDR high-rises and the TV tower mark a leap in scale in the urban fabric. During the day, it’s a madhouse there; Alexanderplatz is also a major shopping destination. But at night, the place is empty. According to current plans, there will be a high-rise zone to the north and east of Alexanderplatz. After the fall of the Wall, Berlin I think the area will become denser had to forge a new identity – a and more interesting with each new process that is perhaps still not project. What is important is that complete. What do you think of the interim result so far? people live there and that the square is lively in the evening. Our high-rise There is likely an intermediate result, but I don’t know if I am happy project at Alexanderplatz is driving about this result. Berlin tends to be this change; in addition to offices and provincial; that simply has to be said. retail space, the complex will also After the fall of Communism, there feature 350 new apartments. was a moment of cosmopolitanism, which gradually faded. The architec- What will happen to the existing ture scene, in particular, has become East German buildings around quite introverted. Certainly, there are Alexanderplatz? some brave exceptions, but overall, Most of them have now been placed Matthias Sauerbruch in Conversation with Sandra Hofmeister

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under protection. The House of Statistics is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting projects at the moment – and perhaps also a future model for the culture of remembrance. It had been vacant since 2008 and is now being redeveloped, a collaborative model project for administration, culture, and housing – there is some serious experimentation going on there! That is already quite positive, even if we still have to wait for the result. Unfortunately, this culture of experimentation disappeared more and more after the fall of Communism. It is important

“Alexanderplatz is one of the most urban places in Berlin, and it will be even more so in the future.”

that there are still niches and that they are becoming more concrete, partly with the support of the Senate and partly on the initiative of citizens or private architectural firms, as with the House of Statistics. This is what creates quality in the city. What role do public spaces play in Berlin? In addition to mixing functions and densifying the city, maintaining and enhancing outdoor spaces is critical to its future development. There are 104 CULTURE AND EDUCATION

very good landscape architecture firms in Berlin and outstanding built examples, such as the Park am Gleisdreieck. Maybe someday, we’ll see cars banned from the streets, and we’ll be able to take up more of the streetscape again. Unintentionally, this was already the case in the 19th century. The city was utterly overcrowded, with people crammed into small apartments. Their living room was the street and the local pub, and professions were sometimes practised on the street. In a sustainable city, outdoor spaces – hopefully at a higher level of quality – must once again play an important role in people’s day-to-day lives in the future. You recently completed two timber construction projects: the Metropolitan School roof extension and the Luisenblock with the offices for members of the Bundestag. What is the future of timber construction in Berlin? As a society, we have set the goal of achieving the Paris climate targets. That’s why we all have an obligation to see ways to make that happen. The construction sector, as we know, plays a crucial role in this aim. Timber construction is one solution to reduce emissions and bind CO2 from the atmosphere, as long as it is done sensibly. Other natural building materials, such as clay, are also an option, as is the reuse of demolition materials or recycled materials. As architects, we must address these issues – there is no way around it. I think optimizing building services

deserted, but now the Europacity systems (for operational optimization) is insufficient; that’s the experi- has been built, drawing many more ence we have had with several of our people there. projects. We also need to get a handle on gray energy. In addition, we must rely significantly more on alternative energy sources, as the Ukraine crisis shows. A final question: Do you have a personal favourite place in Berlin? I do, and it’s the Invalidenfriedhof cemetery – right next to the ­Europaviertel on the border dividing Mitte and Wedding. It is a former military cemetery with graves of Prussian generals, including the grave of August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Invalidenstrasse is named after a shelter for invalids of the Prussian army, and the cemetery was part of this complex. It was located directly on the border between Mitte and Tiergarten, and thus on the dividing line between East and West Berlin; the so-called death strip ran right across the graves. The history of Prussia’s rise to world power, the world wars and their consequences, the division of the city, and now the reconstruction of the Berlin republic – all this can be understood there. Today there is a bike path, a footpath, and an informational sign explaining it all. On the other side of the Spree Canal, there was a construction site for a long time, with piles of gravel and sand. It was the kind of place that can only exist in Berlin – somehow banal yet highly dramatic. I liked that a lot. The cemetery was long Matthias Sauerbruch in Conversation with Sandra Hofmeister

○ ○ Metropolitan 7 Berlin  ↪

School p. 91 West 24 Luisenblock  p. 275

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Client: State of Berlin, represented by Königin-Luise-Str. 80–84, Dahlem the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district office of 🌐 arndt-gymnasium.de Berlin Structural design: IB Bauart Landscape design: Birgit Hammer Completion: 2017 Area: 3,176 m2 Use: Cafeteria, library, computer workstations, school newspaper editorial office, storage/stage

8

AFF Architekten

Clever Folds Arndt-Gymnasium

For the extension of the Arndt-Gymnasium secondary school in Berlin-­ Dahlem, brothers Sven and Martin Fröhlich of AFF Architekten designed a three-story structure, docking it onto the southwest corner of the existing school building. The first floor is glazed and slightly recessed, creating an entrance area protected from rain and sun. Rising above this open space are two upper floors, which connect to the old building along their light gray plastered facade; access to the older building is possible on both of these levels.

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The cubature of the new annex does not follow rigid right angles. Rather, it is polygonally folded, resulting in a less stringent appearance. The architects originally wanted to build the extension around a large tree, but it had to be cut down during construction. Inlays set in a concrete wall mark where the tree’s branches would have abutted the new building. The angularity of the building structure repeats in the indoor and outdoor light fixtures and in the verticals of the window reveals. Glazing on both sides of the first floor enhances the communicative effect of the common spaces; this is where the cafeteria is located, together with a serving kitchen and adjoining rooms. A separate room was set up for the school newspaper, which connects to the library and computer center. The latter two rooms open onto an outdoor space, which the architects designed as a reading garden. Flexible use is a central priority in the design. For example, the storage room next to the cafeteria was painted entirely black and can be transformed into a theatre. Its double sliding doors can act like a curtain that opens on both sides, while the cafeteria seating area serves as the auditorium. The staircase and access levels have also been rethought. Skylights now draw in plenty of sunlight, and seating areas turn the hallways into comfortable lounge areas during breaks and free periods. The interior is dominated by light gray exposed concrete – a material that has proven its robustness to AFF in everyday school life. Sandstone-colored drywall and acoustic panelling have a slight metallic sheen, their subtle warmth contrasting with the calm sobriety of the exposed concrete elements. Custom-made built-in cabinets, shelves, and kitchenettes avoid creating a rupture between the architecture and interior – an occurrence that is not uncommon in school construction. nk

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Client: Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, represented by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning Structural design: Werner Sobek Ingenieure Completion: 2012 Area: Main reading room approx. 9,000 m2 Use: Reading rooms, magazines, study desks

9

Unter den Linden 8, Mitte 🌐 staatsbibliothek-berlin.de @sbb_news

hg merz

Cube of Light State Library Unter den Linden

For nearly 20 years, the venerable Berlin State Library (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) on Unter den Linden underwent repairs and expansions. The neo-baroque structure was built from 1903 to 1914 according to plans by Ernst von Ihne and suffered severe damage during the Second World War. What was left of the large reading room and its dome – one of the largest in Berlin – was demolished in 1975. “As a result, the State Library lost its symbolic and material core,” explained HG Merz, who designed and implemented the reconstruction of the large reading room, the smaller rare books reading room, the vault, and open stacks between 2000 and 2012. The remaining renovation work was completed by 2019.

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The main reading room is situated in a cubic structure whose proportions of 36 meters high, 30 meters long, and 35 meters wide follow the historical model. The axial development of the building was also maintained. Entering from Unter den Linden, it leads through a choreographed sequence of rooms: Through an open hall into the fountain courtyard, then via the large staircase hall into the vestibule with the light dome, and from there into the reading room. To filter, distribute, and attenuate the daylight that passes through the reading room during the day, the glass envelope of the new reading room has a multilayered structure. The outer glazing consists of 12-mmthick white glass segments, each of which is connected by four point supports to a wind-protected supporting structure in the space between the facades. Inside, floor-to-ceiling white insulated glass is framed on four sides by aluminum profiles, and finally, a layer of semi-transparent, PTFE-­ coated fibreglass. At night, the artificial light shines from within into the surrounding courtyards. Rising from the lower part of this light cube with its semi-transparent ceiling is the “book bowl” – a nearly three-story room lined entirely with shelves. The shelves, tables, counters, and balustrades are made of multilayered linden wood veneer dyed in various shades of alder. The textured natural material casts a warm glow in the room and corresponds with the red-orange rugs. The spines of the 127,000 books intensify the colorful mosaic, setting a sensual counterpoint to the bright, almost ethereal glass shell. Periodic openings pierce the shelf walls of the reading room, providing access to the upper galleries and the workstations along the walkway. Surrounding the reading room is a ring of even more bookshelves, set in a cross-wall construction of prefabricated reinforced concrete. This area, set off by its off-white color scheme, is the research library for historical books. In total, 265 media and group workstations are available in the middle of the reading room and around its perimeter. The rare books reading room contains a further 48 workstations and marks the transition between the old and new buildings. nk

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Client: silent green Kulturquartier Gerichtstrasse 35, Wedding Structural design: Michael Beier 🌐 silent-green.net Landscape architecture: Verde @silentgreenkulturquartier Landschaftsgestaltung Completion: 2016/2019 Area: Approx. 6,200 m2 Use: Exhibitions, concerts, studios, seminars, offices, multipurpose common rooms, film archive, restaurant, kiosk

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Kombinativ Büro für Architektur mit Bauplanung.im.Kontext

Reusing a Crematorium silent green Kulturquartier

When it was commissioned in 1910, the crematorium in Wedding was the first of its kind in Berlin. Cremations were as new as they were controversial at the time. The facility was located on the edge of the cemetery and surrounded by a dense residential development. Architect William Müller’s solution was to design a cosy, almost medieval complex of stone buildings with low-pitched roofs nestled around a monastic courtyard with a colonnade. Only the tall chimney revealed something about its use. Because of its location – in certain weather conditions, ash was said to be found on the windowsills of many apartments – operations ceased in 2002, and the buildings stood empty for a decade. Then the Silent Green Kulturquartier initiative – with strong

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support from the art gallery Savvy Contemporary, the Musicboard Berlin, and the Arsenal art cinema film archive – convinced the district and the city that the site was worth repurposing for cultural use. Today, the site is home to some 20 companies and collectives from Berlin’s art and creative industries, with over 100 employees. When it opened in 2015, the renovation and conversion of the first of several structures was complete: The main building, with its octagonal, 17-meter-high domed hall. All the work was closely coordinated with the monument protection authority. The buildings around the courtyard were gutted to rezone the floor plans for smaller studio and conference spaces. Their rooms open to the courtyard, and a few new openings were added. In the main building, the floor-to-ceiling wall niches for the urns that line the domed hall were preserved as witnesses of its former use, and the historic terrazzo floor was lovingly restored. The hall is now an impressive, central venue for all users. Much of the exhibition space is underground in a 1,600-square-meter concrete hall, added in the 1990s as a fully automated coffin storage facility with its own access road. Three zones now divide this level into a bar, a small screening room, and a large L-shaped hall. Openings through which coffins were once wheeled were preserved in the wall between the bar and the hall. The old driveway was filled in and is now covered by a new build from 2019: A narrow, two-story block with five studio units standing sideby-side like row houses, each with access to a shared terrace. This studio block faces the central walkway leading up to the main building. A place of silence and mourning that once burdened the neighbors with ashes on their windowsills has successfully been transformed into a lively cultural center that invites people to meet, think, learn, and interact through its restaurant, exhibitions, and events. fh

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The former crematorium (back) reopened in 2015 as a campus for cultural work and cultural events. A new

 1 Kulturquartier Silent Green, at the former crematorium, Wedding

 2 Studio building  3 Entrance

 4 Urn cemetery, Wedding

building with five two-story studio units (right) was completed in 2019.

10 silent green Kulturquartier Kombinativ Büro für Architektur mit Bauplanung.im.Kontext ○

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 1 Dome hall  2 Inner courtyard  3 Studio building

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 6 Cold storage  7 Foyer  8 Gallery

 9 Lounge and bar 10 Concrete hall, ­exhibitions

The central mourning hall was preserved with the columbarium and its many niches for cremation urns. Today, it

serves as the main event space. Below: The former coffin warehouse is now an exhibition space.

10 silent green Kulturquartier Kombinativ Büro für Architektur mit Bauplanung.im.Kontext ○

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 11 Wohnregal FAR frohn&rojas  12 IBeB ifau + Heide & von Beckerath  13 Am Lokdepot Robertneun Essay Berlin Building Groups: The City for Personal Use Florian Heilmeyer  14 Ausbauhaus Neukölln Praeger Richter Architekten  15 Building Group Project BIGyard zanderroth architekten  16 Glashütte Alt-Stralau Eyrich Hertweck Architekten  17 Walden 48 ARGE Scharabi, Anne Raupach Interview Tanja Lincke: Centrifugal City  18 Home on the Spree Tanja Lincke  19 Haus L Kersten + Kopp  20 Single-Family Home brandt + simon architekten Essay Giants of the 1970s Florian Heilmeyer

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135 141 149 157 167 175 183 189 195 203 211 217 223

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Instead of filling the gap between the buildings, the Block + Void House by Roger Bundschuh comprises two small residential towers at the edges of the site;

a small urban square straddles the space between them. The arrangement gives the apartments maximum sunlight from three sides.

Block + Void House Bundschuh Architekten

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On the banks of the Dahme River: The apartment building by Love architecture +

urbanism in Berlin-Grünau welcomes the waterfront with terraces and open areas.

Steg am Wasser Love architecture + urbanism

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The corrugated stainless steel facade of this building group project in Moabit reflects the neighborhood as an abstract, almost fluid image. The interior is

column-­free. All ducting runs through the facade layer, so the floor plans can be easily divided and combined as needed.

House 6 Sauerbruch Hutton

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Structural design: IB Paasche Client: Private Completion: 2019 Area: 1,088 m2 Use: Residential, offices Housing units: 10

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Emdener Strasse 52, Moabit

FAR frohn&rojas

Living on a Prefab Shelf Wohnregal

In Berlin, several architects have recently explored in very different ways how affordable housing can be combined with architectural ambitions despite rising land prices. In addition to building groups and cooperatives, they include architectural firms such as Praeger Richter, Brandt+Simon, Zanderroth, and Robertneun. One possible answer is to deliberately forego the usual fit-out standards – like this experimental corner house by architects Marc Frohn and Mario Rojas Toledo of FAR. They dubbed the new apartment building “Wohnregal”, referring to a predecessor of the same name built in 1986 in Kreuzberg (architects: Nylund, Puttfarken and Stürzebecher). FAR’s Wohnregal is similarly pared down to the organization of infrastructure and the design of a robust shell, while the rest is left to the residents. At the same time, FAR’s building demonstrates quite visibly how it was built: To the north,

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the precast concrete parts and slabs are visible, as are the puzzle-like joint pattern and the open staircase, which is secured with thin metal mesh. The underlying principle is the use of precast concrete elements commonly used to construct large warehouses and industrial halls. The Wohnregal in Moabit consists of precast concrete columns, some two storys high, with brackets to hold the precast concrete beams. Between them, prefabricated TT ceiling elements span the entire width of 13 meters. The high degree of prefabrication saved time and money during the construction phase, while the building method allows for flexible floor plans in the individual units. The architects involved the concrete manufacturer early on, integrating the fabrication and installation processes into the design. In the end, the entire shell was completed in just six weeks. The architects acted as the developers and currently use the first floor as their office. The five floors above them have two differently sized dwellings each. Fully glazed curtain walls, which can be opened completely using floor-to-ceiling sliding elements, close off the open floor plans to the east and west. This transparency, unusual for residential buildings, makes the precast structure fully visible. The materials underline the building’s rugged charm: Exposed concrete elements, glass, light gray screed, and sockets and radiators in plain view. The guardrails consist of gratings made of glassfiber-reinforced plastic, a standard industrial product that has been uniquely adapted by the coating of mint-green paint and vertical hanging. The unfinished dwellings look more like workshops or studios instead of family apartments – but that will change once the residents have moved in. The aesthetic is particularly fitting to Berlin and our times, where the boundaries between living and working have long since dissolved for many people. The project is currently being continued on a much larger scale in Berlin-Hellersdorf, where 124 apartments are being developed according to the same basic concept, with only minor changes. fh

136 LIVING

The supports and TT precast ceilings that form the concrete structure are commonly used in commercial buildings. FAR Architekten adapted the system for their multilevel apartment building, benefiting from the short construction time.

Site plan Scale 1:3,000

11 Wohnregal FAR frohn&rojas ○

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Client: Selbstbaugenossenschaft Berlin Completion: 2018 Area: 12,275 m2 Use: Residential, work, commercial Housing units: 17 studios and 66 studio apartments (24–132 m2)

12

Lindenstrasse 90–91, Kreuzberg 🌐 ibeb.berlin

ifau, Heide & von Beckerath

Lively Urban Mix IBeB Integrative Building Project

Before the real estate prices in the German capital skyrocketed, the Berlin Real Estate Fund had launched a pilot project for a mixeduse development in 2011. Instead of selling five plots in southern ­Friedrichstadt to the highest bidder, they were sold to the developers with the best concept. The aim was to preserve the urban mix in this part of the Kreuzberg district, with its cultural institutions, art galleries, and media companies, surrounded by blocks of large office buildings and high-rise West Berlin-era social housing.

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The selected projects included new buildings for the taz newspaper and Landau Media AG, the Frizz23 residential and commercial building, the headquarters of the Berlin Medical Association, and the Metropolenhaus at the Jewish Museum. The fifth plot was given to a joint initiative by the architects’ association ifau (Institut für angewandte Urbanistik) and Heide & von Beckerath in cooperation with Selbstbaugenossenschaft Berlin. The building project at the former wholesale flower market is jointly run and defined by its diverse residents and users. The studios and studio apartments include both condominiums and cooperative rentals, which fosters a social mix in the building. There is also space for a non-profit community organization and three commercial units. “Thanks to the relatively low property price, the project can subsidize its cooperative living and studio spaces and offer affordable rents over the long term,” explains the self-build cooperative. To reduce costs, maximum use was made of the permitted development density. The 100-meter-long and 23-meter-deep structure has two staircase cores. Access to the units is barrier-free along three levels. The first floor is accessed from the outside. On the north side of the building, duplex studio apartments occupy the first floor and first upper level, while on the south side, the duplex spaces link the first floor and basement level. An internal “street” on the first upper level connects several atriums. Following the example of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, it provides access to the studio apartments, some of which are multilevel, along the central axis of the building. On the fourth floor, dwellings are accessed from an outside walkway, which also leads to a common room and a roof garden. It is not only the intelligent mix of uses that deserves special attention. The materiality of the building allows it to stand out pleasantly from the many nondescript new builds in Berlin. The facades are clad with custom three-dimensional ceramic elements with an irregular triangular profile, creating a sophisticated sculptural pattern that makes the outdoor surfaces shimmer and shift with the variations in ambient light. nk

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The communal roof terrace includes a covered community space that can be reserved for private gatherings.

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View of the inner hallway with skylights on the third floor.

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Clients: UTB Projektmanagement (Am Lokdepot 1–5, 9, 11–12), Grundstücksverwaltungsgesellschaft Heyden (Am Lokdepot 6), private building group (Am Lokdepot 7/8 and 10) Structural design: ARUP Germany, IB-bauArt Berlin, Ingenieurbüro Doliva Landscape design: Atelier Loidl, Lohrengel Landschaft Completion: 2017 Area: Approx. 19,000 m2 Use: Residential, studios, commercial, restaurants Housing units: Approx. 220

13

Am Lokdepot 1–6, 10, Kreuzberg

Robertneun

Show Your Colors Am Lokdepot

In the 2000s, a 20,000-square-meter lot was still vacant at the southern end of Park am Gleisdreieck, located on the border between the districts of Schöneberg and Kreuzberg in a north-south direction along a busy railroad track. Because of the noise, the land around the two former halls of the locomotive depot – flat industrial buildings made of steel and brick – was designated as a commercial area. An investor asked Robertneun Architects for a design study. At their own risk, the architects came up with three possibilities, one of which was residential. They recognized the potential of this location with its wide view over the tracks and the adjacent sports fields: A more open horizon is hard to find in Berlin. With their residential proposal, they won over the

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investor and then the two districts, which made the necessary changes in the urban development plan so it could be built. Robertneun drew up design specifications for the whole row of 15 houses and around 220 apartments, plus commercial spaces, a bar, and studios on the first floor. In addition to the investor’s classic condominiums, two houses were allocated to building groups. The basic structure comprises plots of equal depth and 7, 14, or 21 meters wide; the architects speak of S, M, and L. The different sizes enabled a wide range of apartment typologies and sizes. All buildings share the same urban base of red brick, which compensates for the height differences of up to 7 meters along the entire length. The architects also specified the materials to be used and the shades of red for pigmented concrete, metal, and recycled bricks – tones derived from the industrial environment, particularly from the architecture of the old locomotive depot. Seven of the 15 buildings were designed by Robertneun and demonstrate the architectural possibilities within the specifications. At the base level, the entrances celebrate the imposing floor heights with massive entrance gates and oversized house numbers. The six floors above offer a variety of housing types, even in the narrowest of buildings: one-bedroom apartments that can be connected to neighboring duplexes if needed, full-length apartments, and apartments with interlocking split levels. The facades reflect the diversity inside, be it with a metal shelf installed in front of the house for deep loggias or balconies that protrude far from the facade. Their bold red color does not at all seem like a provocation but appears surprisingly natural. fh

150 LIVING

The architects also developed the site plan. Aiming for a mix of housing types, they divided the long row into plots of different widths: size S for multilevel living around a two-story loggia; size M for single-floor apartments with a freight

elevator and balcony as a second escape route; and size L with multi-unit apartments with winter gardens and cantilevered balconies.

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Typ L Mehrspänner- Wohnen mit Gewächshaus und Laderampe. Typ M Wohnen auf einer kompletten Etage mit Lastenfahrstuhl und Balkon als Fluchtweg. Typ S Wohnen auf mehreren Etagen um eine 2- geschossige Loggia herum.

Typ L Mehrspänner- Wohnen mit Gewächshaus und Laderampe.

Typ M Wohnen auf einer kompletten Etage mit Lastenfahrstuhl und Balkon als Fluchtweg.

Typ S Wohnen auf mehreren Etagen um eine 2- geschossige Loggia herum.

STADT - BLOCK - HAUS - WOHNUNG Je nach Grundstücksgrösse werden charakteristische Wohnungstypen unter der Überschrift "Fabrikwohnen mit Gewächshaus" entwickelt. Die unterschiedliche, aber thematisch verwandten Haustypen werden dann zu dem Block zusammengesetzt. Es entsteht ein atmosphärisches Ganzes, das den Ort mit seinem gewerblichen Charme ebenso wie das zeitgenössische Wohnbedürfnis von Aneignung und Aussenraum zusammenführt.

STADT - BLOCK - HAUS - WOHNUNG

Je nach Grundstücksgrösse werden charakteristische Wohnungstypen unter der Überschrift "Fabrikwohnen mit Gewächshaus" entwickelt. Die unterschiedliche, aber thematisch verwandten Haustypen werden dann zu dem Block zusammengesetzt. Es entsteht ein atmosphärisches Ganzes, das den Ort mit seinem gewerblichen Charme ebenso wie das zeitgenössische Wohnbedürfnis von Aneignung und Aussenraum zusammenführt.

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Wohnregal at Admiralstrasse 16, Kreuzberg. It was built as part of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) 1984/87 to designs by Kjell Nylund,

Christof Puttfarken, and Peter Stürzebecher for the Selbstbau­ genossenschaft Berlin building collective.

Berlin Building Groups: The City for Personal Use A Model of Success or a Project of the Past?

Florian Heilmeyer

BERLIN Urban Architecture and Daily Life Since 2009

Why do we need investors anyway? Over the past 20 years, Berlin’s building groups have shown that cities can also be developed on a larger scale in ways that are cooperative, participatory, cost-effective, and creative. The crisis in Berlin’s housing market is real: Prices for rental and owner-­occupied apartments have risen by over 150 percent in the last ten years. The statistics apply to the entire city area, and the price increase in the city center is even higher. But the most dramatic development is the growing gap between normal salaries in the German capital and the cost of living. For households with medium or low incomes, housing in Berlin has become an existential issue.

Sellout of the housing market Politically, this crisis is homemade. It was the scandal surrounding the state real estate bank, caused mainly by the Berlin Christian Democrat (CDU) party, which tore a huge hole in the already tight municipal budget after 2001. The CDU was succeeded by a senate coalition under Klaus Wowereit (known for his description of Berlin as “poor but sexy”) with the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Left (then called PDS). It was their decision to sell off the silverware – the best municipal properties, including some of the larger city-owned housing companies. In just under ten years, some 100,000 apartments were privatized, including socially and architecturally ambitious housing estates like the Waldsiedlung estate in Zehlendorf, the Hufeisensiedlung estate in Britz, and the Carl Legien complex in Prenzlauer Berg. The shift marked the birth of large private housing companies such as Deutsche Wohnen, Deutsche Annington, and Akelius, which are so controversial today. The reason: Not only were municipal apartments sold off in droves; construction of new municipal-owned apartments was also halted. The market was left entirely to private investors. The built results of this housing crisis can be seen all over Berlin today, in the form of densely packed complexes, notably in Europacity north of the Hauptbahnhof station, the Mercedes-Benz district along the East Side Gallery, and around the Park am Gleisdreieck (p. 183ff.). At the same time, it marked the start of a golden era for Berlin’s so-called building groups (Baugruppe). In Berlin, a building group is a loose association of people who come together to purchase and build on a plot of land, usually to live there themselves. For it was not only the low-income earners who were increasingly excluded from the priva­ tized housing market; middle-class families also found that their wishes for shared housing – for all kinds of patchwork communities – or more environmentally sustainable construction methods were not being fulfilled by the private sector. Long before the financial crisis, Berlin was 158 LIVING

a city with a large number of self-confident tenants who repeatedly joined forces and actively campaigned for their rights. This story goes far beyond the politically motivated squatters who occupied derelict buildings in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. In a sense, the idea of the building group fell on particularly fertile ground in Berlin. Beginnings of a successful model Where exactly Berlin’s first building group came together is yet to be researched. What is clear is that a handful of prominent projects were already taking shape during the International Building Exhibition (IBA) in West Berlin in 1984/1987. These include the self-build terraces on Frei Otto’s two “eco houses” on Corneliusstrasse in Tiergarten were also realized for building groups as part of the IBA. The residents were responsible for the interior of their own unit.

Wilhelmstrasse based on designs by Dietrich von Beulwitz; the visionary residential apartment building on Admiralstrasse by Kjell Nylund, Christof Puttfarken, and Peter Stürzebecher; and the two “eco-houses” by Frei Otto on the southern edge of Tiergarten. Even then, all three of these examples were based on the principle of architecturally organizing a robust shell with sensible wiring and plumbing and leaving the rest to the users – like an empty shelf that is only filled later. The findings of such projects continue to inform the most innovative apartment buildings in Berlin – such as Praeger Richter’s prefabricated buildings (p. 167ff.), FAR Frohn&Rojas’s Wohnregal (p. 135ff.), and Robertneun’s new lofts at the old locomotive depot (p. 149ff.). The Selbstbaugenossenschaft (self-build cooperative) in Kreuzberg, founded in 1984 as part of the IBA to implement the apartment building on Admiralstrasse, has since built ten apartment buildings in Berlin. Most recently, it played Berlin Building Groups: The City for Personal Use Florian Heilmeyer

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Blend of living and working: Oderberger Strasse 56 building group project by BARarchitekten, 2008.

High ceilings, huge windows: Pappelallee building group project by BHBVT Architekten, 2008.

Facade with fold-out balconies: Strelitzer Strasse 53 building group project by fatkoehl architekten, 2007.

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a major role in the construction and occupancy of the IBeB near the Jewish Museum (p. 141ff.). These successful pioneering projects ensured a growing number of building group enthusiasts in Berlin in the 2000s. The Internet facilitated their organization, and some architectural firms chose to specialize in building group projects – not always an easy task when faced with a diverse and often argumentative group of clients. While the lengthy discussions are certainly often tiring, it is precisely this collaborative approach to developing highly individual dwelling solutions that yields the greatest innovations in Berlin. In 2008, the E3 building group built the first seven-floor apartment building made of timber in a European city center. Architects Tom Kaden and Thomas Klingbeil worked with timber construction specialist Julius Natterer on the project, devising a fire protection concept with a concrete stairwell separate from the building’s main timber structure as a safe escape route. Not far from there, at Oderberger Strasse 56, another building group erected an equally remarkable townhouse with the help of BARarchitekten. Its appearance is inconspicuous, but a closer look at the houses in the row reveals differences in the distribution and design of the windows. Inside, a vibrant mix of rental and owner-owned residential and commercial units enables various combinations of living and working. A few hundred meters further on, architect Florian Köhl implemented a rare technical innovation with a group of buildings on Strelitzer Strasse: Each unit has a small balcony that can be rotated away from the facade to face the evening sun. What investor would ever have gone to the trouble of getting the necessary approvals for such a gimmick? Beyond investor architecture These are just a few examples of the originality that emerges in many building groups. In contrast, housing construction by private investors and municipal housing associations unfortunately all too often ossifies into template-like floor plans. The building groups counter this rigidity with exuberantly individual design – showing that a city developed by its residents for their own use is a more vibrant one. At the same time, the building group projects in Berlin have grown in size over the years. Completed in 2010, the BigYard in Prenzlauer Berg by Zanderroth comprises 45 residential units (p. 175ff.). The Möckernkiez in Kreuzberg (Baufrösche, Roedig.Schop Architekten, Rolf Disch, Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, and Schulte-Frolinde), which was completed in 2018 on the edge of Park am Gleisdreieck, consists of 12 buildings with 471 units – a small estate in its own right. Holzmarkt Dorf (Hütten und Paläste Berlin Building Groups: The City for Personal Use Florian Heilmeyer

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Architekten, Carpaneto Architekten, and Urban Affairs) is a 12,000 m2 self-organized urban village in a prime location directly on the banks of the Spree River. Alongside a band of dreary investor architecture according to the so-called Mediaspree development plan, it is an open, inviting space for culture, working, living, and events. Implemented with a large number of participants, these pro­ jects not only fulfil the immediate wishes of their residents but also create spaces for their neighborhoods. Their experiences have, in turn, inspired new projects like the recent building group at Lynarstrasse 38–39 in Wedding. According to plans by Schäferwenningerprojekt, a large, innovative timber building was erected there in 2019, including 98 apartments and cluster apartments as well as seven spaces for social facilities and events. At Alexanderplatz, a major initiative saved the former East German Haus der Statistik (House of Statistics) from sale and demolition. The EU-funded pilot project is developing the massive prefabricated building into a mixed-used model complex with affordable living and working spaces based on social and ecological principles. The idea of the building group has also been applied to commercial buildings, such as Frizz23 (Deadline Architekten), focusing on culturally oriented endeavours, and the ex-Rotaprint building in

At Alexanderplatz, a major initiative saved the former East German Haus der Statistik (House of Statistics) from sale and demolition.

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Living and working, with a large communal space: R50 building group project by Jesko Fezer and ifau – Institut für angewandte Urbanistik, 2013.

Berlin Building Groups: The City for Personal Use Florian Heilmeyer

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The Spreefeld cooperative project (2013) in Kreuzberg: A wide range of apartment sizes has been created in the three buildings, from mini-apartments (25 m2) to cluster apartments (600 m2), plus

workshops, community and event ­spaces. The site remains open to the public. Architecture: Carpaneto Schöningh /Cooperating parties ­fatkoehl and BAR Architects

Wedding, which was acquired by a diverse group of users who saved the historic concrete building from demolition. Recently, the entrepreneur Thomas Bestgen announced his wish to build a 100-meter-high timber skyscraper at Anhalter Bahnhof as a vertical neighborhood with intensive participation by the future users. His project can also be seen as a direct descendant of the bold movement transcending profit-driven market interests to approach housing not as a commodity but an existential basic right for well-being and the basis for a mixed, lively city. Today, we are faced with a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, smaller building groups like those that emerged in the 2000s and 2010s are few and far between – land prices in the heart of Berlin are far too high for middle-class families. Such building groups can now only be found well beyond the city center, in the surrounding state of 164 LIVING

Brandenburg or on odd leftover, corner, and niche sites that the conventional financial market has no use for. Yet, a new dimensional leap could be imminent at Tegel. On part of the former airport grounds, the new Schumacher Quarter is being developed with 5,000 new apartments – to be built exclusively by municipal housing associations, cooperatives, and building groups. Should these plans actually be implemented, it would represent a gigantic, innovative, and absolutely contemporary self-build IBA-like showcase. In that case, Berlin’s building groups will have reached the scale of an entire city district. The question should be asked louder and louder: Why do we need investors in Berlin’s housing sector at all?

Buildings with office and studio space were also developed by building groups, like the FRIZZ23 commercial building in Kreuzberg, designed by Deadline.

Visible timber construction: The cooperative project at Lynarstrasse 38/39 in Wedding has 98 apartments plus spaces for social and cultural initiatives. Built in 2019, it was designed by schaeferwenningerprojekt.

Berlin Building Groups: The City for Personal Use Florian Heilmeyer

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Client: Ausbauhaus Neukölln building group Structural design: Janitz Ingenieure Building services: Büro Lüttgens Project management: Müller Rose Projektsteuerung Completion: 2014 Area: 3,500 m2 Use: Residential Housing units: 24

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Braunschweigerstrasse 43, Neukölln 🌐 ausbauhaus-neukoelln.de

Praeger Richter Architekten

Liberated Layout Ausbauhaus Neukölln

The Ausbauhaus stands on a 1,400-square-meter corner lot in Neukölln. To the north, it looks out onto Braunschweiger Strasse, which has a dense mix of apartment buildings from the Wilhelminian period (late 19th/early 20th century) and the 1970s. To the south, an expansive view opens over the adjacent sports fields and the tracks of the Ringbahn railway. Architects Henri Praeger and Jana Richter responded to the situation by giving their new build a clear north-south orientation, with apartments that have windows on opposite sides. Towards the street, an intermediate space serves as a small forecourt with bicycle racks, benches, and a playground; to the rear are the gardens of the four firstfloor units, one of which is currently used as an office. On the north

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side, the building is inconspicuous, with a light gray plastered perforated facade. To the south, the wide, open terraces with their silvery floor-toceiling curtains hint that this is a rather unusual residence. The Ausbauhaus is more than just another Berlin building group project. It is an architectural statement and a concept for how residents in multilevel housing can be given significantly more freedom in designing their dwellings. The architects had already gained experience with building groups in Dresden and Berlin before this one in Neukölln and went one step further with their concept for the Ausbauhaus. The building is designed as a basic shelf-like structure, with a building envelope that is ­completely decoupled from the interior construction. Industrially prefabricated walls made from semi-finished elements, combined with the prestressed concrete ceilings, allow for column-free units with a depth of 10 meters. Although the ceilings are more expensive than conventional solutions, the assembly system saves construction time and requires less reinforcing steel, making the system more cost-effective after all. The 20-square-­ meter loggias could be installed almost simultaneously. The result is open, flexible floor plans with high ceilings. Thanks to the loggias on one side and the evenly distributed windows in the perforated facade on the other, the building offers a maximum of layout options, from single lofts and offices to four-room family apartments. The building can later be converted with relatively little effort. Dwellings were offered in three different designs – standard apartment, standard loft, and raw shell for self-build. This made it possible for lower-income households to participate in the building group. One can hope this concept will become commercially viable – not only in Berlin. Praeger Richter are currently continuing their approach in a follow-up project in the neighborhood of Südkreuz in the south of the city. fh

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Possible floor plan layouts, scale 1:400

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Client: Baugruppe Zelterstrasse 5 Landscape architecture: herrburg Landschaftsarchitekten Project development: SmartHoming Completion: 2010 Area: 9,210 m2 Use: Residential, studios, commercial, common areas Housing units: 45

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Zelterstrasse 5–11, Prenzlauer Berg

zanderrotharchitekten

Big in Berlin Building Group Project BIGyard

The BigYard building group project in the north of the Prenzlauer Berg district launched in 2007 and dates back to the heyday of Berlin building groups. Land prices in the city center were moderate at that time, larger building gaps were still available, and ever more people were interested in self-organizing their own living space, with the financial means to do so. The size of building groups grew accordingly. The BigYard building group was initiated by the architects themselves through their project development company, which specializes in organizing and supporting building groups. With their group of 72 adults and 50 children, the architects have referred to their project as a village, which they managed and designed.

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The property is 100 meters long and only 34 meters wide. At the back of the plot to the southwest is the 22-meter-high brick firewall of a Wilhelminian-era (late 19th/early 20th-century) tenement. The architects responded with a design for two rows of buildings, 100 meters long, with three different apartment typologies. Stretching out between them is an elongated courtyard, a contiguous space serving as a common area. The front block facing the street consists of 23 four-story townhouses. The rear terraced block was built adjacent to the firewall and has six floors with two stacked residential units each: A three-story garden house with direct access from the courtyard and a penthouse, also three storys high, with a large eat-in kitchen, patio, and compact roof garden. Both blocks are connected by the courtyard, which has no fences; only the paving and landscaping lend some areas a more private feel and others more communal features. To prevent the 100-meter-long, nearly 13-meter-wide courtyard from becoming a dark canyon between the two residential wings, the architects elevated it by a story. The base level below the raised courtyard provides parking spaces for cars and bicycles, as well as storage and utility rooms. The four-story row houses face the street with a strictly structured urban facade of precast concrete elements and oversized windows, each with a larch wood ventilation sash. Inside, the dwellings have a more open feel, with split levels and varying room heights. Only two floors of the front building face the courtyard. The surprisingly high ceiling on the lower level provides a living and cooking area full of natural light. The garden houses are entered directly from the courtyard. Their three floors are also split-level with high ceilings – a slight compensation for the reduced amount of daylight. The 12 penthouses above are accessed along a corridor on the fifth floor; an open balcony facing the courtyard doubles as a second e ­ scape route. With their creative mix of typologies and embrace of dense, urban forms of living, Zelterstrasse exemplifies the enormous potential for innovation that building groups have brought to the Berlin housing market. fh

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View from a townhouse onto Zelter Strasse.

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View from a penthouse into the garden courtyard and onto the roof of the street-facing townhouses.

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The communal garden courtyard is on the second floor between the two

residential blocks with their 45 diverse living units.

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Client: Building group Glashütte Glasbläserallee 11, Friedrichshain Alt-Stralau Structural design: Ingenieurbüro Rüdiger Jockwer Project management: Andreas Büsching, Tanja Zieske Completion: 2018 Area: 4,335 m2 Use: Residential, commercial Housing units: 25

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Eyrich Hertweck Architekten

Living in a Bottle Factory Glashütte Alt-Stralau

The last remaining building of Glashütte Alt-Stralau is located on the peninsula between Rummelsburg Bay and the Spree River. When its production of bottles for beer, sparkling wine, and table water ceased in 1990 after more than a century, most of the factory’s workshops fell victim to the wrecking ball. An industrial brick-lined steel structure from 1921 survived but stood empty for decades. On the initiative of a Berlin real estate agent, a private building group was found to buy the building and give it a new lease of life, transforming it into 25 apartments and one commercial unit.

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Eyrich Hertweck Architekten renovated the historical building and restored the exterior to its original appearance: They opened bricked-up windows, exposed historical masonry, and rebuilt what had been damaged. On the first floor, a 39-meter-long riveted plate girder spans a sloping incision in the west facade where freight trains used to pass through the building. A dark zinc facade with large windows now encloses the once-open space to accommodate first-floor dwellings. A new attic story was added to the east wing and covered with dark zinc sheet to evoke the old bitumen roof. The architects added a staircase each to what was left of two bridge houses on the east side, which once connected the workshop building with the neighboring building – they now provide access to two apartments on the first upper floor. The other units are entered along a wide interior walkway and existing stairwells on the south and east sides. High ceilings, exposed concrete, and the exposed steel structure and brickwork in many places preserve the industrial character of the old glassworks in the new lofts. Low boxes for sanitary rooms and services stand freely in the high, light-flooded flats, allowing lines of sight across the apartment. The area above these boxes serves residents as additional usable space. Nearly every apartment unit has a balcony with a view of the water: On the second floor, an old walkway was transformed for this purpose, while on the third floor, two boxes clad in rusty steel were mounted to the facade on the east and north sides. The outdoor area is designed for communal activities, with seating, a playground, and a boules court. bz

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Site plan Scale 1:10,000

Low sanitary and service boxes leave room for generous views through the apartments for a spacious, loft-like character.

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Client: Walden 48 building cooperative Completion: 2020 Area: 7,350 m2 Use: Residential Housing units: 43

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Landsberger Allee 48, Friedrichshain

ARGE Scharabi I Raupach

Cooperative Living at a Cemetery Walden 48

Cooperative building projects have gained enormous importance in Berlin in the last 20 years: As a form of financing but also as a means of bypassing the standardized housing market and creating a living environment suited to one’s preferences. With the Walden 48 project, a building cooperative in the Friedrichshain district built 43 apartments on the edge of the Georgen Parochial Cemetery. The church awarded the property through a conceptual competition prioritizing socially-­ oriented and community-oriented projects. The winning design came from two Berlin architectural firms, Scharabi Architekten and Anne Raupach. Both the design and the cubature of the new building are a clear response to the cemetery at the back of the building and the wide, busy street in front of it. The

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two-story base is set back, creating a protected buffer zone behind the historic cemetery wall that directly borders Landsberger Allee. Rising above that is a rectangular, four-floor apartment building. Clad in greenish-gray slate shingles, the street-side facade is punctuated by a loose arrangement of windows varying in width and vertical positioning. Some of them push out of the facade as shallow bay windows, enhancing the plasticity of the building envelope, which is accentuated by the subtle shadows cast by the overlapping polygonal slates. The recessed story at the very top echoes the recessed base; both levels feature wooden facades that sandwich the slate shell of the intervening floors. The 60-meter-long, seven-story structure was constructed in timber from the basement ceiling upwards. The materiality of the building is visible in the interiors and on the southeast facade – a rarity in the inner-city context. Elevator shafts are also made of raw timber, as are the stair flights. Only the stairwell is made of concrete for fire safety reasons. A wood-concrete composite structure was used for the floor slabs. Ceiling spans of 7.20 meters and room depths of up to 13 meters allow flexible use. The first floor and roof level are designated common spaces, and a bicycle garage is located in the basement. At the back of the building, deep loggias contrast with the coarser appearance of the slate cladding on the front. The rear facades are finished on all floors in natural larch wood, which has a warm, sensual color. The floor-to-ceiling window frames are also made of wood, with a glazed surface. It almost feels as if the interiors were turned inside out – adding a bit of sauna feeling to Berlin’s urban space. Gray-green railings and facade accents harmonize with the warm timber tones, which will weather and fade over the years. The architecture is designed to develop a patina – it will not grow old but more mature. nk

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Site plan Scale 1:4,000

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Tanja Lincke in Conversation with Florian Heilmeyer

Centrifugal City

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Together with her husband, Anselm Reyle, architect Tanja Lincke created a place for her family to live and work in Treptow along the Spree River. At the former East German water police base, they transformed old boat sheds and garages into studios and workshops, created a charming garden, and added their home and a storage shed. The project reveals much about Lincke’s understanding of Berlin as a complex historical landscape that has evolved over time. In this interview, she explains how her views of what defines good architecture and urban planning differ from what has been built in much of Berlin over the past 30 years.

For young artists, Berlin has a reputation for being a good springboard for their career. But for budding architects, this tends not to apply. Nor did you move to Berlin in 2007 to launch your architectural career, right? That’s correct. After studying in Aachen, I went to work for the Federal Chamber of Architects (BAK) in Brussels. During that time, I saw an opening at the BAK in Berlin, and I applied. Most of all, I wanted to live in Berlin – that’s why I took the job, not the other way around.

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Why Berlin? For me, Berlin has always been a city of many opportunities, where everything is less established than what I experienced in Brussels. For me, Berlin was liberating and full of potential, a city with a sense of freedom and many open spaces. That is probably the reason why many people come to Berlin. How did you end up becoming an independent architect in Berlin? Working at the BAK was a good experience, but I felt something was missing. I wanted to work hands-on

wilderness. Anselm is from Swabia [in southwestern Germany], so for him, it was just a wonderfully messy area full of possibilities. But I come from East Germany. I was only 12 when the Wall came down, but I remember the GDR as being oppressive. My grandfather and parents were under surveillance; my grandparents had been expropriated, and my uncle had tried to flee the country; he was caught and imprisWhat was that confrontation like, oned in Rostock for many years. and how did you develop your On top of that, I grew up in Bad approach to the site? Liebenstein, a beautiful little town At first, the complex seemed gloomy in Thuringia with a long tradition and oppressive. The East German as a health resort. Because of its water police had a post there, as did mineral springs, Bad Liebenstein the East German border guards who was developed into a posh health monitored the sector border to West resort in the 18th and 19th centuries, Berlin. Unlike Anselm, I didn’t see with a theatre, spa promenade, it as a beautiful place overgrown by indoor promenade, and fountain temple. In East German times, this history was very present. But after German reunification, three new spa centres were built around the city. They were closed worlds with their “I don’t want to knock down own hotel, restaurant, swimming the past but create pools, hairdresser, etc. Those new ­something new with it.” structures sucked the life out of the little town. The old spa buildings stood empty and fell into disrepair. Now, almost all of them have been demolished. That had a significant impact on me and is likely the reason why, as an architect, I am respectful when dealing with old structures. Once something is gone, you can’t get it back. And if you try to undo such interventions through reconstruction that only looks back and not forward, they only worsen and seem fake. again. Then I met Anselm [Reyle], who had just purchased this large property on the Spree at an auction. He asked me if I would like to handle the conversion of his studio. It seemed a bit crazy at the time. The last time I worked in an architecture practice and designed any projects was an internship while at university. Suddenly I was confronted with the situation at this site.

Tanja Lincke in Conversation with Florian Heilmeyer

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Only by dealing with the past can we move forward in the present. So can your project here be understood as an architectural statement? With the converted boathouses and garages, the preservation of the past as ruins and a garden, and the two new buildings as purposeful additions at the edge. Is it your way of dealing with the past? It is a very personal project. At first, I didn’t realize how much it had to do with my biography, but that became clearer in the process. We have been developing this site since 2009, working on it since 2011 and living on it since 2017. Only gradually has it become a place where I not only enjoy working but also living. Focusing on the building structures helped me to approach the site at a healthy distance. It’s important not to get caught up in personal sentiments; otherwise, you risk going to extremes and glorifying or rejecting the past. There are countless architectural examples of both, especially in Berlin. The demolition of the Palace of the Republic and the subsequent reconstruction of the City Palace is undoubtedly the most prominent case. In this respect, I guess you could say that this project shows my view of architecture quite well: I don’t want to knock down the past and erase Since 2009, Tanja Lincke and her husband, the artist Anselm Reyle, have had their studios on a former water police site on the Spree River. By transforming the central boat hall into

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an artificial ruin with an artistic garden, they created more space on the densely built-up site, which was once completely sealed.

its traces but create something new with it. This approach sometimes requires radical changes and additions. Nostalgia or excessive caution can only lead to the wrong result. When you add something, it should make its own statement. Only when I manage to put my feelings aside and thoughtfully engage with the location, the space, and the present can something new take on strength and power. Then it is durable and resilient because it is unpretentious.

Tanja Lincke in Conversation with Florian Heilmeyer

Is that also what you miss most in Berlin’s urban politics of the last 30 years: The complexity in dealing with existing structures, also on a larger scale? Absolutely. When I came to Berlin 15 years ago, the city still felt rather run-down. At the same time, there were instances of so-called urban repair, like at Leipziger Platz. I’m not a fan of the approach. Why does it all have to be restored to a supposedly ideal original state? Fortunately,

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these “repaired” areas were still such a small part of Berlin at the time that it didn’t matter. Overall, the city still felt very open and free. But it has since reached a tipping point. Those new, stereotypical quarters, such as Europacity at the Hauptbahnhof, Park am Gleisdreieck, and around the Ostbahnhof station, are spreading more and more. They are gaining the upper hand. There is something sad about that.

View into the office of Tanja Lincke Architekten in the former water police engine workshops. The rooms were largely preserved; new skylights provide more daylight. Exterior insulation was

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What went wrong? I am not an urban planner. But I think that Berlin’s huge, empty spaces should not have been planned in one fell swoop. Plans of that magnitude should be allowed to evolve and change over time. My impression is that they were only designed from a bird’s eye view, not at a human eye level. It’s all about large shapes and cubatures, and when someone “dares” to do something, it’s a particularly bold geometry. Too seldom is it about

applied behind a shell of corrugated sheet metal, maintaining the site’s industrial character.

how people can spread out and move through urban spaces or buildings, or how they can make places and spaces their own. Structures of use and ownership should play a much more prominent role than form. The question should not be: What do you want it to look like in the end? But instead: What can I do with it? I think the latter is what Berlin actually stands for.

“Stereotypical quarters like ­Europacity are gaining the upper hand. There is something sad about that.”

Everyone laments the loss of Berlin’s open, abandoned spaces. What is left when it is no longer an affordable city for young creatives? I don’t know. The open spaces in the city center are dwindling, but they still exist – they are just more hidden or further out. When we started working here, the employees always grumbled about how far out the site was. Today, no one says that anymore. A lot is happening now in the old factory buildings in Oberschöneweide. The University of Tanja Lincke in Conversation with Florian Heilmeyer

Applied Sciences has had its campus there for a long time, but few knew about it because it was always too far away. Now the Reinbeckhallen are right next door, where some wellknown artists have their studios. The halls have become a vibrant location for Berlin’s arts and culture scene. Overall, something like a centrifugal movement is taking place, in which the circles are becoming wider and wider. At the same time, a handful of established art institutions from the post-reunification period still exist in the city center, such as the KW Institute for Contemporary Art. I don’t think that’s such a bad state of affairs.

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Clients: Anselm Reyle, Tanja Lincke Structural design: Pichler Ingenieure (building), KLW Ingenieure (warehouse) Landscape architecture: Tanja Lincke with Anselm Reyle; Das Reservat Gartengestaltung (Harald Jeremias) Completion: 2017 Area: House: 376 m2, studio: 702 m2, warehouse: 309 m2, garage: 86 m2 Use: Residential, studio, warehouse

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Baumschulenstrasse 1b, Treptow

Tanja Lincke Architekten

Garden Ruins with Stilt House Home on the Spree

There was a time, shortly before the real estate boom, when artists across Berlin were able to purchase large, second-hand properties in the city: Jonathan Meese bought a pumping station in Prenzlauer Berg, Bryan Adams acquired abandoned industrial halls in O ­ berschöneweide, Elmgreen and Dragset took over a water pumping station in Neukölln, and Katharina Grosse an old East German supermarket in Friedrichshain. The buildings were in good hands as the artists settled into them with minimal intervention, leaving all their history visible. The artist Anselm Reyle also bought a unique property at auction in 2008: a 9,000-square-meter plot directly on the Spree River with sundry barracks, garages, and halls. The neighboring water police no longer needed the dockyard site. Architect Tanja Lincke drew up designs for its redevelopment, and in 2011 Reyle moved his studio from Kreuzberg to the former engine

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workshops and garages on the edge of the site. The dark, flat garages were given a new facade with almost black profiled steel panels and exterior insulation. Large glass doors and new skylights in the old roofs have created light and bright studios. The largest of the old halls was demolished because it was derelict, retaining only its end wall, with its large metal gate to the water, the tall brick chimney, some bits of wall, and two old crane runways. Over the years, Lincke and Reyle laid out an intentionally wild-looking garden around these self-created ruins. They had the massive concrete slabs which once covered the entire area ripped out of the ground

and piled some of their broken pieces into sculptural heaps. Then they added new buildings. An 11-meter-high warehouse for materials was added to the wall facing the water police. Painted black and completely enclosed, it is a surprisingly discrete object nestled in the lush environment, despite its size. Eventually – the architect and the artist were by now a couple with children – they decided to build a house on the waterfront. Like the warehouse, it was to be large and pleasant yet subtly blend in with the existing buildings. Lincke designed a robust, industrial-looking home right on the riverfront that adopts the materials of its surroundings: concrete, glass, wood, and metal. The 200-square-meter, 3.55-meter-high living space lies like a sandwich between two sturdy concrete slabs, which are pushed one floor into the air by a narrow concrete core and six slender exposed concrete columns: The house is a floating disc with a 4.10-meter-­ high air space below. The stairs, bathroom, and kitchen are inside a concrete core, which opens like a pavilion on the roof terrace to reveal a summer kitchen. From the living room, the view stretches beyond the ruins and halls to the water and greenery. The house does not dominate the site but acts – like the dark warehouse – as a part of it. According to Lincke, people passing by on the river sometimes mistake the house for an older part of the site, thinking it might be the control bridge for the crane runways. For her, that’s a fine compliment to her architecture. fh 204 LIVING

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Client: Private Completion: 2019 Area: 457 m2 Use: Residential

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Steglitz-Zehlendorf

Kersten Kopp Architekten

Black Diamond in a Lush Garden House L

Located on a detached property set back from the street, this single-­ family home is in one of the oldest villa districts of Berlin in Steglitz-­ Zehlendorf. A single-story bungalow from the 1960s once stood there, surrounded by stately domiciles dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the new owners wanted something larger for their family of five. The plot is a clearing surrounded by a dense screen of trees and bushes, accessible only by a narrow driveway; architects Minka Kersten and Andreas Kopp took that situation as the starting point for their design. The new house is conceived as a protective shell, standing unobtrusively but confidently among the other villas in the area.

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The polygonal, two-story home is situated at the northeast corner of the site. Facing southwest, the first floor opens to the garden with a largely glazed facade, allowing the afternoon and evening sun to penetrate the rooms inside. The front of the building folds slightly so that the lower level recedes, and the upper floor forms a small canopy. An expansive wooden terrace at ground level reinforces the connection between the interior spaces and the garden. There is a slight indentation around the entrance where the driveway meets the house to the east. Together with the distinctly angular roof shape and the monochrome cladding of dark gray glazed larch wood boards, this gives the impression of a sculpted boulder that has been rolled into the garden. The striking roof shape came about in reaction to the regulations: The new building was officially allowed to have only one story, like its predecessor – but an attic floor was permitted. The architects therefore decided to raise the southern part of the roof somewhat above the four bedrooms while letting the northern part slope steeply, allowing the dormers to protrude as full-sized windows. Together with polygonal skylights, they provide plenty of daylight indoors and a direct view of the sky. From the garden, the house appears to have two floors, even while the central clear height remains low enough for the upper floor to be designated as a roof according to the building code. The windows give a glimpse of the layout inside: on the upper floor, clearly defined bedrooms surround the gallery space at the stairs and include the master bedroom with a loggia. In contrast, the first floor is a large, open space with cooking, dining, living, and music zones flowing loosely into one another. This space ends in the north with a small study and a children's play area that can be partitioned off with a sliding door. Light-coloured surfaces of exposed concrete and oiled oak wood characterize the interior. With generous glazing facing southwest, the entire first floor is clearly oriented towards the garden. To the north, an oversized panoramic window – 3.90 � 2 meters – ensures that the living area opens in several directions, giving the impression of sitting in the middle of the garden. If this were a boulder, it would be decidedly homely and porous. fh

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 8 Children’s ­bedroom  9 Bath

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Structural design: Ingenieurbüro für Tragwerksplanung Dr.-Ing. Christian Müller Completion: 2009 Area: 160 m2 Use: Residential

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Maximilianstrasse 10a, Pankow

brandt + simon architekten

A Green Oasis Single-Family Home

Maximilianstrasse in Pankow is densely lined on both sides by the typical Berlin apartment buildings of the Wilhelminian era (late 19th, early 20th centuries). At number 10, however, one such building is missing. Instead, the view reaches into the back courtyard and beyond – stopping at a small building with a striking green shingled facade. This building gap has a history: The property was occupied by a garden nursery in the 1920s when the only structure was a two-story garden shed facing the street. In the 2000s, the property was sold, and the new owners commissioned Brandt + Simon Architects to prepare a few design studies. They settled on the proposal that was the most unique. The old shed was demolished, and a new home for the family of three was erected

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along the firewall of the rear row of older apartment buildings. Situated at the back of the plot, it is surrounded by an 850-square-meter garden. The space between it and the street-side buildings is empty; the owners may develop it later, possibly with a five or six-story building, though nothing has been planned so far. The green garden house is unconventional in several respects. First, there is the striking, colorful facade of 8,350 beaver tail tiles, which evolve

from dark green to white from bottom to top – a pixelated image of a green garden under a wide, open sky. So that the small structure would not be visually overpowered by its much larger neighbors, the architects stretched it upwards: The result is a tall, narrow figure on a compact 65-square-meter footprint, which nevertheless allows a generous 160 square meters of living space spread over three floors. While the rooms on the first floor are 3 meters high, the study under the roof enjoys a room height of 4.10 meters. It is also seldom that a new timber house is situated between old stone multifamily apartment buildings. The concrete foundation and the timber frame of the new build were completed in just six months. The roof-tile facade provides a robust and durable cover for the timber structure behind it. Windows varying in format, size, and arrangement contribute to the dynamic form and reflect the character of the different rooms. The pentagonal footprint ensures a diversity of views. Five very different skylights were inserted into the folded zinc roof, allowing light to fall from above into the library and study – and making the sky over Berlin an integral part of this wonderfully unusual garden house. fh

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The Neues Kreuzberger Zentrum (New Kreuzberg Center) was built in 1969–74 to designs by Wolfgang Jokisch and Johannes Uhl. Despite calls in the 1990s

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to demolish the large apartment building, today, it is again considered an example of much-needed inner-city densification. Photo from 2012.

Giants of the 1970s The Slow Rediscovery of an Era

Text: Florian Heilmeyer Photos: Andreas Gehrke

BERLIN Urban Architecture and Daily Life Since 2009

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The giants of the 1970s had a hard time in Berlin for a long time. Fans of Tegel Airport could only admit their admiration behind closed doors. The general opinion was that it was too old, small, and worn-out to play a role in developing the nation’s capital. It was seldom acknowledged that its scuffed exterior harbored the ingenious, one-ofa-kind concept of a drive-in airport and that this airport had already served nearly ten times more passengers than planned for many years. The public opinion held firm in its rejection. And there were no loud protests when the International Congress Center (ICC) closed in 2014 because its operator, the state-owned Messe Berlin, moved to a less expensive new building. Meanwhile, in the southwest, the Charité university hospital came within a hair’s breadth in 2020 of destroying the Hygiene Institute and the former animal laboratories – two of the most distinctive buildings in its holdings. The demolition permit had already been issued when protests from architecture aficionados and the monument preservation authority argued for the high value of these historic buildings. The smaller the city, the bigger the plans Most people in reunified Berlin were suspicious of the architectural relics of the long-forgotten 1970s. Paradoxically, these giants were built when the city was freshly divided by the Wall and smaller than ever before. In 1978, East and West Berlin together had a population of just under three million – a full third less than in 1939, when B ­ erlin was the third most populous city in the world after New York and London. On the other hand, it was during this time that thoughts of astonishing radicality and magnitude were possible in both halves of the city. It was still necessary to repair the war damage and rebuild the city in both halves. This set the scene for the large housing estates, such as in Marzahn and Hellersdorf in the east and Märkisches Viertel and Gropiusstadt in the west. Added to this was the competition of systems, which made the city a showcase for West Germany and East Germany alike. The 1957 Interbau architectural exhibition in the Hansa quarter in the western part of the city and the redesign of Stalinallee in the eastern part of the city around the same time were just the start of the architectural rivalry between the two political systems. Particularly in the west, the lack of a surrounding area into which the city could expand spurred projects such as the massive 600-meter-long structure on Schlangenbader Strasse built over the city highway, which holds 1,043 housing units. To this day, it is one of the largest contiguous residential complexes in Europe. At the same time, ideas were long shaped by compulsive comparisons with the other half of the city. Anything that would impress the neighbor was good enough to be built. In 1968–1970, architects Barna von Sartory and Georg Kohlmaier developed a system of rolling 224 LIVING

International Congress Centrum Berlin (ICC), built in 1974–79 to designs by Ursulina Schüler-Witte and Ralf Schüler. The vast, landmarked building has been

Giants of the 1970s Florian Heilmeyer

vacant since 2014 and listed since 2019; its future use is unclear. Photo from 2021.

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sidewalks for Kurfürstendamm. The idea was to span the streets with tubular overpasses, allowing pedestrians to stroll along the prestigious boulevard. In 1971, Ursulina Schüler-Witte and Ralf Schüler, the architects of the ICC and the so-called Bierpinsel tower in Steglitz, proposed building over the former Avus racetrack in Grunewald. Their proposed terraced buildings, each up to 30 meters high and 100 meters wide, were to span a length of 9.5 kilometers. Today, such ideas might seem frivolous, but back then, they were actual proposals that did not seem impossible at all. When it opened in 1979, the ICC was the most expensive building in West Germany, with construction costs of almost one billion German marks – a fact proudly announced at the time. Today, public agencies would more likely try to artificially understate construction costs. At that time, however, the ICC, with its sprawling dimensions and inventive architecture, was also a response to the Palace of the Republic, built shortly before in central East Berlin as a cultural and event venue. As such, it also had to be a little more expensive. Demolitions in the East, disregard in the West In reunified Berlin, barely anyone initially cared about the huge relics of the recent past. While they were forgotten in West Berlin, the eastern part of the city was quickly transformed. In 1996, the former East German Foreign Ministry, a 145-meter-long rectangular structure along the west side of Marx-Engels-Platz (today: Schlossplatz) and across from the Palace of the Republic, was demolished without significant protest. By then, Hotel Berolina behind the Kino International had already been removed, as had the Stadium of World Youth. And not even the city’s monument preservation authority could save the large “maple leaf” [Ahornblatt] restaurant on Fischerinsel, whose spectacular roof was designed by engineer Ulrich Müther. In 2006, after a long public debate, the Palace of the Republic followed, where today the rebuilt Berlin City Palace stands, home to the Humboldt Forum. Even the East Berlin TV tower was the subject of a brief, but for some a quite serious demolition discussion. After all, the cityscape of reunited Berlin could not be overshadowed by such a triumphant asparagus-shaped structure built by the East German regime. By and large, the giants in the West were spared the demolition craze in the East. Nevertheless, they were also given little appreciation. Instead, they were left to rot, often with their possible demolition and a replacement structure in mind. In particular, the large buildings of West Berlin’s social housing programmes – such as the High-Deck housing estate in Neukölln, Märkisches Viertel in Reinickendorf, and the Graue Laus in Kreuzberg – were repeatedly the target of populist 226 LIVING

Prefabricated apartment buildings in Berlin-Marzahn at the Raoul-Wallenberg-

Ernst Thälmann Park, Prenzlauer Berg. Its architects included Erhardt Gisske and Helmut Stingl. The transformation of the gas factory into an “inhabited park” with 1,332 apartments (1976–86) was an East

Giants of the 1970s Florian Heilmeyer

Strasse S-Bahn railway station. Photo from 2020.

German prestige project. After 1990, there were frequent debates about demolishing nearly all of the slab buildings on the complex, but today their preservation is hardly questioned. Photo from 2017.

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The Schlangenbader Strasse freeway superstructure, built in 1976–80 in West Berlin, is one of the largest apartment buildings in Europe. Measuring 600 meters long and up to 46 meters tall, it houses 1,064 apartments. Designed by

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Haus des Reisens (House of Travel) was built in 1969–71 to designs by Roland Korn, Johannes Brieske, and Roland Steiger. Like other East German high-rises around Alexanderplatz, it was to be demolished according to the

master plan by Hans Kollhoff. After years of vacancy, the building grew popular because of its temporary nightclub uses. The future of the building is open, as the facade is in urgent need of modernization. Photo from 2001.

Georg Heinrichs, Gerhard Krebs, and Klaus Krebs, the “Schlange” (English: snake) was long considered a monster ripe for demolition. Today, there is renewed discussion about building residential developments along the

motorway, given the high land prices. Photo from 2022.

criticism. They were readily blamed for the complex social problems in the redevelopment areas, becoming negative symbols of a failed urban development and social policy. Paradigm shift The fact that a healthy urban development policy cannot be implemented with a stick of dynamite is apparently a recent realization in Berlin. A fundamental paradigm shift began with a handful of publications and exhibitions highlighting the great value of the large buildings and settlements of post-war modernism. A more sensitive approach should now be taken to renovating and converting these existing structures, breaking the cycle of demolition and new build embraced by previous generations. This argument has also been helped by the shift towards more ecological and environmentally friendly construction methods. Architects’ associations, residents’ initiatives, and construction companies in Berlin are now demanding that older buildings be treated with greater care. Not only more energy-efficient new buildings, but above

The fact that a healthy urban development policy cannot be implemented using a stick of dynamite is a recent realization in Berlin. all, the preservation of older ones are to receive the greatest possible support in all public funding guidelines. Skilfully converting an existing building saves costs, energy, and emissions. As it seems, the smart building of the future uses fewer resources overall. This also directly benefits the Berlin giants, who are currently looking to a rosier future. Everywhere, the values built into them are being rediscovered: Tegel Airport is being developed into a university and research location, complemented by a large new urban district to be constructed primarily from wood. Several initiatives from the arts and culture scene are campaigning for the adaptive reuse of the ICC. They believe that the trade fair giant, which has been dormant since 2014, can be reactivated as a public venue for cultural activities and events. And even in the case of the radically brutalist Mäusebunker (Mouse bunker) in Lichterfelde, which once housed the central animal testing laboratories of the Free University, a citizens’ initiative was able to prevent its demolition. Another citizens’ initiative in Wedding promises to be similarly successful in its campaign to preserve and convert the Giants of the 1970s Florian Heilmeyer

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The project Wohnen am Kleistpark (Living at Kleistpark) in Schöneberg was built in 1974–77 to designs by Jürgen Sawade, Dieter Frowein, Dietmar Grötzebach, and Günter Plessow. Its 514 social housing units have sometimes housed more than 2,000 residents at a time. Heated discussions in the 1980s and 1990s called for the demolition of the social hotspot. Since 2001, it has been officially dubbed “Pallasseum” and listed since 2017. The apartments inside are becoming more popular and expensive. Photo from 2012.

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Giants of the 1970s Florian Heilmeyer

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House der Statistik (House of Statistics) in Mitte was built in 1968–70 for the Central Statistical Office of East Germany to designs by the architectural collective of Manfred Hörner, Peter Senf,

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and Joachim Härter. After 1990, the large complex was used by various government authorities, and since 2008 it has been empty. A broad coalition of artists and civic groups formed to

contest the demolition plans. Since 2018, the complex has been developed in a participatory process as a model project for the common good. Photo from 2021.

vacant Diesterweg high school. Their aim is to transform the stunning structure – made of exposed concrete with a bright orange plastic facade – into a community center with affordable apartments and studio space. And the art entrepreneur Johann König runs his gallery in the St. Agnes church in Kreuzberg, another quite brutalist structure that was radically overhauled by Arno Brandlhuber. At Everything-is-Different Square The pinnacle of this new approach is at the northeast end of Alexanderplatz. A broad alliance has formed there to develop the massive complex of the former East German Central Administration for Statistics, which has been vacant since 2008, into a lively, diverse urban district. Initially, the four large high-rises were to be demolished and replaced by new buildings by private investors. But a bottom-up initiative called Haus der Statistik (House of Statistics) succeeded, bit by bit, in convincing the Senate, the district, and Liegenschaftsfonds Berlin (the city property fund) to rethink their approach. In 2018, a unique cooperative was formed, bringing together the citizens’ initiative, the district office, the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing, the Berlin-­Mitte district housing association, the city property management company, and smaller alliances of artists and residents. They are now working on a nationwide model project to implement truly cooperative urban development in this massive complex. They aim to preserve the complex as well as possible. Conversions and extensions will be undertaken to accommodate the district town hall along with 4,000 new and mainly low-cost apartments, city administrative offices, studio and event spaces, rooms for social initiatives, and restaurants. In a play on the location at Alexanderplatz, the urban activists wrote “Allesandersplatz” – meaning “Everything-is-Different Square” – in large letters on the building. Will this project, as a pilot of grassroots urban development, really be able to fundamentally change the course of events in Berlin? It remains to be seen whether all the work that still lies ahead of the cooperative will be crowned with success. International attention is already assured: In 2021, at the 17th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, Haus der Statistik was awarded the highest prize, the Golden Lion. Such a prestigious award for such a pragmatic conversion project would have been unimaginable 20 years ago.

Giants of the 1970s Florian Heilmeyer

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Cube Berlin at the Hauptbahnhof train station: The folded glass facade of the

ten-story office building by 3XN reflects its surroundings.

Cube Berlin 3XN

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House on the lake: Following its renovation, the former boathouse from

the 1970s is now a private artist’s studio.

House on the Lake Side David Chipperfield Architects Berlin

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The high-rise next to the Hamburger Bahnhof was the first structure built as part of the new Europacity quarter in Mitte.

Tour Total Barkow Leibinger

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Client: taz publishing cooperative, daily newspaper Structural design: Schnetzer Puskas International Completion: 2018 Area: 5,400 m2 Use: Offices, restaurant, store

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Friedrichstrasse 21, Kreuzberg

E2A Architekten

Living Facades taz Publishing House

The new building for the taz daily newspaper is part of the southern Friedrichstadt creative quarter. To create the new complex, the district allocated a handful of public plots around a former flower market hall in 2014 – not according to the highest bid, but through an experimental conceptual competition. Applicants had to explain how their project would create added value or make a social contribution to the area. In the case of the taz newspaper, that was easy. Since its founding, the long-established publishing house had been located on nearby Kochstrasse at Checkpoint Charlie. Due to rising rents, taz feared its “foreseeable displacement” from the historic newspaper district, as it explained. By selling the land at a comparatively low price, the district was able to keep the small publishing house in the neighborhood permanently.

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In contrast to the two other large, new publishing buildings in Berlin, Springer and Suhrkamp, taz announced an open architectural competition, in which E2A Architekten from Switzerland prevailed against 312 competitors. Their free-standing, self-confident solitaire is a strikingly unusual building, even while adhering to the required eaves height of 22 meters. A white-painted steel structure envelops the building like a net. The diagonals break powerfully with the surrounding conservative buildings with their rectangular shapes, plaster facades, and classical windows. The gesture of this new building is clearly metropolitan. The fact that the steel structure is located a good distance behind the actual glass facade creates an envelope of unusual depth. Within it are wraparound balconies and terraces where employees become part of the lively outdoor scene during breaks for coffee and cigarettes. Inside are large, robust rooms. The prefabricated reinforced concrete structure allows for column-free floors with flexible partitioning, which is what the client wanted. The rooms are like large workshops, and the materials underscore this impression: colored burled floors, exposed concrete, metal, and glass. The building is organized in three parts, which are also clearly visible in the outer cubature through a distinct setback. At the south is a narrow zone with smaller, enclosed rooms. In the future, another building will be erected there, which is why the taz building is oriented more to the north towards Besselpark. The open floors to the north are well suited for open office landscapes. Between them is the central part, which on the first floor includes a foyer, shop, and large auditorium for full staff meetings and public events. Above this are larger, partly two-story meeting rooms. To the east is a courtyard with an open, four-flight staircase that serves as both an escape route and a shortcut from floor to floor and to the various editorial offices. The architects aimed to reflect the bustle of the newspaper editorial offices through its design with the movement of people up and down along the facades – making the liveliness of the taz a visible sign in the neighborhood. fh

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Client: Axel Springer SE Structural design: Arup Energy concept: Transsolar Energietechnik Completion: 2019 Area: 52,204 m2 Use: Offices, meetings, events

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Zimmerstrasse 50, Mitte 🌐 axelspringer-neubau.de

OMA

A Spectacular Cleft Axel Springer Publishing House

How could it be otherwise with a new headquarters building for Axel Springer, Germany’s largest (and most notorious) publishing house? The entire process, from the architectural competition to the opening, was a major media event: From the selection of the 19 architectural firms for the limited competition to the awarding of no less than three first prizes (to Bjarke Ingels, Ole Scheeren, and OMA). From the beginning, the client’s overriding wish was for the design to be as spectacular as possible. A contemporary icon that could rival the famous shiny gold 78-meter Springer skyscraper from 1966 and at the same time be an “avant-garde media house of the future,” as CEO Matthias Döpfner described it.

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OMA’s design meets both requirements with flying colors. Behind the golden skyscraper, the architects rolled a black boulder that fills the construction area to the maximum. Its smooth glass facade rises 48 meters – more than twice the standard “Berlin eaves” height in the city center. The boulder takes up 9,100 square meters of the 10,000-square-meter trapezoidal plot, leaving barely any space for the sidewalk. The panes of its outer glass shell are tightly printed with a camouflage-like pattern. About halfway up the 11th floor, the dark shell leaves a gap that divides the building into upper and lower halves like a waist. This cleft approximately marks the standard eaves height, like a salute to the old buildings across the street. Towards the southwest corner, where the main entrance is located and the building points directly to the golden tower, this incision breaks open more and more like a cleft in the rock. Behind it is a complex of glass and white steel girders, becoming increasingly free-form towards the corner and held up by slim, dark gray concrete columns that are clearly visible from behind. The same spectacle repeats at the northeast corner of the building, where the second main entrance is located. Such spatial stagings are more familiar from Frank Gehry than from OMA. The dramatic play with the surface is a reference to the Berlin Wall that once ran across the site. Roughly along the course of the former Wall, OMA placed a central atrium that rises through the entire nine-story building. Inside, the floors form open terraces on both sides of this ravine-like space, some connected by bridges. While standard-size office spaces are located along the outer facades, the terraces are open, flexible spaces that can be divided according to changing work constellations. The building accommodates more than 3,000 employees, though only a minority are journalists. Most of them work for a major online price comparison platform that also belongs to the publishing group and is responsible for a growing proportion of its revenues. It could be said that the new Axel Springer building is as avant-garde in its architecture as its multifaceted media portfolio. fh

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Site plan Scale 1:4,000

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Client: Industriebaugesellschaft am Bülowplatz (IBAU), Suhrkamp Verlag Structural design: ifb Frohloff Staffa Kühl Ecker Interior: Kinzo (publishing rooms), Ester Bruzkus (restaurant) Project management, contract allocation, site management: DGI Bauwerk Completion: 2020 Area: 7,500 m2 Use: Offices, residential, retail, art gallery, restaurant

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Linienstrasse 32–34, Mitte 🌐 suhrkamp.de

Bundschuh Architekten

An Open Hinge to the City Suhrkamp Publishing House

For many years, this site was one of the most prominent patches of urban wasteland in the Mitte district, immediately behind the Volksbühne theatre on the northern edge of Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. In 1927–1929, row buildings were erected according to the designs of architect Hans Poelzig, framing the theatre building by Oskar Kaufmann and its forecourt. While most of Poelzig’s buildings survived the Second World War, the dynamically rounded corner building at the northwest end of the development was badly damaged and subsequently demolished. The derelict land remained as a small green area until 2016. After German reunification, the buildings and land were acquired by the newly founded Industriebaugesellschaft am Bülowplatz – Ibau,

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as the square was also called until 1933. Ibau wanted to develop the area around the Volksbühne as a creative quarter. A suitable occupant for the vacant plot was long sought until Suhrkamp came up for discussion. After relocating to Berlin in 2010, the publishing house was urgently seeking its own space. Bundschuh Architekten, who had already built Ibau’s striking black, angular residential and commercial building across the street, was commissioned with the design. Roger Bundschuh was already quite familiar with the site and its kiosk, kebab snack bar, and path; his office is directly opposite. He made the existing situation the starting point of his design. Instead of designing a closed block around an inner courtyard like the Poelzig buildings, he arranged the new Suhrkamp structure in two narrow wings along the edges of the site. A slender, seven-story block with soundproofed offices for the publisher was installed along noisy Torstrasse. Meanwhile, a slim, six-­story tower with a wide variety of small apartments hugs the firewall of the historic Poelzig buildings. The first floor is now a bustling commercial zone: A restaurant has taken the place of the old kiosk, a bicycle shop has replaced the snack bar, and an art gallery is housed in the residential tower facing Linienstrasse. The pedestrian path remains – now in the form of a narrow passageway through the first floor of the office block – and still offers a shortcut across the ensemble and in front of the shops, linking the U-Bahn and the tram stations. Instead of a closed block edge, the new structure forms an open hinge, protecting a small, tree-lined forecourt to the south-west. The building’s materials are as robust as the city: Light gray exposed concrete, silvery aluminum, and oversized windows that provide transparency. At night, the colorful book spines of seemingly endless rows of shelves shine out into the city. Thanks to the subtleties of its design and urban setting, the new ensemble has quickly become an intensively used and vibrant part of the city. fh

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In the past, Anhalter Bahnhof in Kreuzberg of the war-damaged terminus station were was one of the city’s most important demolished in 1959. Above: Historic long-distance train stations. The remains facade of Anhalter Bahnhof station.

Airports and Train Stations: Re-Sorted and Re-Used Jasmin Jouhar

BERLIN Urban Architecture and Daily Life Since 2009

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Berlin is known for the mishaps and delays in its major infrastructural projects: The opening of the new BER airport was delayed by ten years, its construction far exceeding all imaginable budgets. Shortly after the opening of the new Hauptbahnhof train station in 2007, two steel girders weighing several tons came loose from the facade, and one crashed onto a staircase in front of the building. What is the state of the infrastructure today, and what happens to the buildings that are no longer in use? Berlin airport trickery The last time I flew from Berlin-Tegel Airport (TXL) was shortly after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. In May 2020, I walked through TXL’s legendary hexagonal Terminal A without luggage or a boarding pass. Because of Covid-19, there were only a dozen connections a day being handled in Terminal C, a corrugated metal shack once built for Air Berlin. The main terminal was already shut down, the rooms deserted, the stools at the coffee stand raised, the baggage carts pushed together. The airport was on the brink of closure, scheduled for late 2020. It was time to say goodbye to a building that Meinhard von Gerkan, Volkwin Marg, and Klaus Nickels – then very young architects – designed in 1974 for the progressive lifestyle in the car-friendly, divided city. It was one of a kind, with its grandiose gesture of the right-of-way – the conceptual core of the drive-in airport – the short distances from the parking lot to the baggage claim area to the boarding gate, the hexagonal floor plan designed for expansion, and all that in a trendy seventies design. But it would be a long time before my first departure from BER. This was not because of more construction delays – the airport opened on October 31, 2020 – but the pandemic, which had made flying difficult. Will the new airport, which was also built according to plans by the Hamburg architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp), ever be able to arouse similar emotions as the popular TXL? The new one, in any case, stands a bit beyond the city limits to the southeast and offers a standard infrastructure: Central security checks, duty-free shops along the way, long walking times, the usual. The situation is aggravated by overworked staff and planning mistakes: For example, there is too little space for baggage check-in, resulting in long, crisscrossing passenger queues. The high columned hall – supposedly a nod to Mies van der Rohe’s New National Gallery – feels cramped when in operation despite the architectural generosity. Meanwhile, Berlin is already working on its next big thing: TXL is to become the Urban Tech Republic. Just one day after the airport closed, Berlin buses displayed the lofty name as the new terminus – although it will, of course, be years before the technology hub opens. Still, the after-use concept is quite ambitious. The Berliner Hochschule 266 WORK

Since spring 2022, the Tegel Airport site has been used as an arrival center for refugees from Ukraine.

The octagon became the TXL Airport trademark.

Right: The architects Nickels, Marg, and von Gerkan (from left to right) at the opening party for the airport in 1974.

Airports and Train Stations: Re-Sorted and Re-Used Jasmin Jouhar

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für Technik University will move into the hexagon-shaped terminal a ­ fter its renovation and conversion, conducted with respect to historic preservation regulations. The seminar rooms, laboratories, and Urban Technologies cluster will serve as a second location alongside its current campus in the Wedding district. A research and industrial park is being built on the airport apron, where it will bring together science, education, and business, similar to the successful complex in Adlershof to the southeast. According to the current schedule, the university will move into its new premises in 2027; the overall project will take place in four construction phases until about 2040. The eastern part of the tarmac will be home to the Schumacher Quartier, a dense urban neighborhood with more than 5,000 new housing units constructed entirely in wood. Planning teams are currently investigating whether it will be possible to source pine wood from Berlin’s forests for the buildings. Construction is expected to begin in 2025. So while the future is just beginning in Tegel, the present is still quite present. From February 2021 to June 2022, the city used the former low-cost airline Terminal C to distribute Covid-19 vaccines. Now it is being used to receive and register refugees from Ukraine. As a socalled arrival center, it serves as a transit station before they travel to other places, with bunk beds available in the former Terminals A and B. Such images may seem familiar: In 2015, when the refugees from the Syrian civil war arrived, Berlin set up emergency shelters in the hangars of the former Tempelhof Airport – except that the people from Syria had to sleep for more than just a few nights in double bunk beds without any privacy. Second life Just because many of Berlin’s infrastructure buildings no longer serve their original purpose does not mean they are obsolete. On the contrary, especially in recent years, they have proved to be valuable reserves of space in an increasingly crowded city. The former airport building in Tempelhof has hosted exhibitions, trade fairs, and music festivals; the old ICC Congress Center recently hosted an art festival and was temporarily used as a vaccination and refugee center; the former Postbahnhof (postal station) stages trade fairs for fashion and art; and the Kaiserliche Postfuhramt (imperial mail delivery office) on Oranienstrasse served as an exhibition space for contemporary photography for several years, until an investor converted it into a hotel. Without the old infrastructures, there would likely be less going on in the city. What’s more, these lavish, hidden spaces have often helped fuel Berlin’s transformation since the fall of the Berlin Wall. A prime 268 WORK

Above: Tempelhofer Feld park is located on the airport’s former runway. Today, the vast open public space is used intensively as urban green for recreational activities.

Right: In the 1950s, Tempelhof Airport was a port of call for refugees from the Soviet sector of the city and from East Germany. From there, they were flown to emergency reception camps throughout West Germany.

Airports and Train Stations: Re-Sorted and Re-Used Jasmin Jouhar

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The new Hauptbahnhof central train station opened in 2006 and, like the TXL and BER airports, was designed by gmp Architekten.

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example is the “mother of all airports”, as Sir Norman Foster once rightly called the one at Tempelhof, which was built during the Nazi era. Not only its hangars but also the open space of its former runway offers myriad possibilities. Tempelhofer Feld is home to community gardens, play areas for children, grazing sheep, high-tech kite flying, and myriad wheeled leisure activities. Meanwhile, the long-term development of the giant building complex is making little progress. Its approximately 300,000 square meters of gross floor space are apparently too daunting for prospective permanent users, even by Berlin standards. At the moment, what remains is the impressive architectural presence of the former airport in the heart of the city and its persisting sense of potential. Missing hubs The situation is different for the many train stations that once made Berlin an important transport hub. Few have remained – bombed in the Second World War, demolished in the post-war period, or leveled and built on after the fall of the Wall. As in Paris or London today, a ring of terminus stations once surrounded the city center until the Second World War, along with several freight and postal stations. Hamburger Bahnhof has served as a museum for quite some time, while the Exile Museum is to be built behind the ruins of the entrance to Anhalter Bahnhof in the next few years, according to plans by Danish architect Dörte Mandrup. Others, such as Potsdamer Bahnhof, Görlitzer Bahnhof, or Stettiner Bahnhof, have long since been erased from the cityscape and are only still represented by place names at most. The surrounding railway grounds were also recognized as valuable land reserves and converted into parks or developed as part of new neighborhoods. Standing on the site of Lehrter Bahnhof, once one of the city’s most prestigious train stations, is the current Hauptbahnhof central station. Opened in 2006, it is within sight of the Chancellor’s Office and the historic Reichstag building, the seat of the German parliament. Both long-distance and regional lines cross at the north-south and east-west axes at the multilevel station, flanked by office buildings. Its predecessor building was a terminus station for trains departing to Hamburg, Hanover, and Lehrte. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, transportation planners reorganized Berlin’s rail traffic, which had been fragmented by war and the division of the city and country. Among several competing plans, the so-called north-south mushroom concept prevailed. The name is derived from the mushroom-like shape of the stylized network. It integrates existing lines such as the S-Bahn city railway and, with the additional long-distance stations Südkreuz and Gesundbrunnen, better connects urban areas further out. Airports and Train Stations: Re-Sorted and Re-Used Jasmin Jouhar

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Breakdowns, bad luck, delays The Hauptbahnhof junction with the new north-south tunnel is at the heart of the implemented concept. The architects from gmp were also involved in what was likely the most important infrastructure project after reunification (besides the BER airport), winning the competition in 1993. As if it were a bad omen for the planning disaster that followed at BER, not everything went smoothly at the Hauptbahnhof train station either. The steel and glass structure was completed four years later than planned due to difficulties with the construction site – and only then because the national railway company Deutsche Bahn decided the roof of the hall above the upper platforms should be shortened. The aim was open in time for the 2006 World Cup. Corners were also cut on the lower-level ceilings: The architects had planned a vaulted ceiling, but a bland, flat ceiling was installed without consulting gmp. Meinhard von Gerkan did what architects rarely do: He sued his client for copyright infringement. The suit was upheld, and in 2008 they agreed on a settlement. Deutsche Bahn paid an unknown amount to gmp’s foundation to support young architects, the Academy for Architectural Culture. All that does not change the fact that passengers are sometimes left out in the rain while waiting for the high-speed ICE to Frankfurt or the Ruhr region. But Berliners have long since gotten used to that – just as they will get used to the mediocre check-in at BER Airport. Typical Berlin!

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BER began flight operations in October 2020. The opening of the new Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport had

been postponed several times before that.

Airports and Train Stations: Re-Sorted and Re-Used Jasmin Jouhar

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Client: Federal Republic of Germany, represented by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR) General contractor: Kaufmann Bausysteme with Primus Developments Completion: 2021 Area: 15,900 m2 Use: Offices, conference rooms

24

Adele-Schreiber-Krieger-Strasse, Mitte 🌐 bundestag.de/luisenblock-west-836084

Sauerbruch Hutton

Timber Revolution in Disguise Luisenblock West

The revolutionary construction approach is not visible from the outside of this building. Its skin of shimmering recycled aluminum and glass does not divulge that this building is 75 percent wood. This fact makes it the largest timber construction project in Berlin’s inner city to date – perhaps the image of a “stony Berlin” by architecture critic Werner Hegemann in his 1930 eponymous book will become a timber one in the 21st century. What’s the story behind the building? For years, the number of parliamentarians in the German Bundestag has been growing, along with their need for more office space. Two parcels of land on Luisenstrasse had been kept vacant since the 1990s for further spatial needs

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by the government. The western plot has now been built on, hence the name Luisenblock West. In 2019, the Federal Building Authority announced a competition for bidding consortiums consisting of project developers, construction companies, and architects, who had to guarantee that their design would be implemented on time and within budget. The budget was 70 million euros, but the bigger challenge was the timetable: Only 20 months were left to complete the building before the 2021 Bundestag election. This speed made modular construction with a high degree of prefabrication almost mandatory. Time constraints, limited budgets, modular construction – this blend has rarely produced good architecture, and not only in Berlin. In the case of Luisenblock, the story was different. The consortium of Primus Developments, Kaufmann Bausysteme, and Sauerbruch Hutton prevailed with its proposal to construct the building from solid timber modules. The group of three had already built a modular timber student dormitory in Hamburg two years earlier. Although the designs of the two buildings are fundamentally different, their systems are similar enough that implementation could begin quickly; the architects drew up the implementation plans while Kaufmann was setting up his production line in Köpenick. Construction started in October 2020, and from April 2021, six office modules per day were prefabricated and assembled on site that same evening. The building stayed on budget and was finished four weeks ahead of time. The architecture translates time and cost constraints into a building of discreet elegance. The structure is defined by its grid of 470 office modules, organized in two blocks with a central staircase open to the south. This creates an H-shaped floor plan, which faces the elongated comb-like structure of the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders House by Stephan Braunfels Architekten, establishing a connecting space between the two buildings. The southern courtyard serves as a forecourt, while the northern courtyard is landscaped and protected from the noise of the railroad line by a building-high noise barrier. The first floor and access cores are made of reinforced concrete, while the offices, meeting rooms, and ancillary rooms are made of solid timber modules. Since it was unclear during construction exactly how the spaces would be allocated, the modules were initially left as separate offices. However, the wall partitions can be removed at any time to create a more open office landscape. New trees were planted to compensate for the 5,000 cubic meters of wood used, which means the entire amount will grow back in 15 years. fh

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Site plan Scale 1:10,000

The Luisenblock consists mainly of prefabricated timber modules.

24 Luisenblock West Sauerbruch Hutton ○

The amount of timber used for the construction will be offset by newly planted trees over the next 15 years.

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24 Luisenblock West Sauerbruch Hutton ○

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Each prefabricated timber module is an individual office. If needed, the partition can be removed for more generous room configurations.

For fire safety reasons, the central stairwell was built of concrete. The wood veneer on the parapets was treated with a fireproof coating.

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Client: ANH Hausbesitz Structural design: SFB Saradshow Fischedick Completion: 2014 Area: 7,860 m2 Use: Offices, eateries

25

Gutenbergstrasse 4, Charlottenburg

AHM Architekten

Industrial Charm The Box

Between the Canal and the bend in the Spree River known as Spreebogen lies the Spree City quarter in the Charlottenburg district. The Royal Porcelain Manufactory (KPM) has been based here since 1872; otherwise, only a few buildings occupy the site. Since the 2000s, new office buildings have been built on its many brownfield sites, and the neighboring Berlin Technical University is also acquiring new premises here. Among the conventional new builds, one conversion by AHM Architekten stands out. The largely windowless building from 1969 first served as a warehouse, and from 1980 as a production and bottling facility for cosmetics. Until 2012, the building enjoyed interim use as a club – typical for Berlin. Its name Box@theBeach lives on in a shortened

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form: “The Box” is now emblazoned in illuminated neon-green letters on the front of the building, now used by offices and eateries. AHM Architekten approached the building as if with a scalpel. They removed the curtain walls of exposed aggregate concrete elements, replacing them on three sides with large-format windows, some of them floor-to-ceiling. Because two development cores brace the reinforced concrete skeleton, individual ceiling and facade elements could be detached without affecting the inherent structure. Opening two ceiling bays on each floor created a glass-covered atrium that brings daylight into the building’s interior. Two glass elevators and a grand staircase in the atrium provide access to the office floors. Replacing the original roof is a load-bearing structure made of precast reinforced concrete elements. This enabled the construction of a further recessed story on top of the building. The foundations did not require additional stiffening thanks to the use of lightweight and wide-span floor elements. Inside, the original structures from the 1960s are painted white, while the new components in exposed concrete remain clearly recogniz-

able in their materiality. A parallel perspective emerges: Old and new are distinct while combining to form a single entity. How surfaces gain depth can be seen in the facades. Cantilevered metal maintenance walkways double as brise-soleils on all floors, intercepting some of the sunlight like a sunscreen. The gratings extend the offices to include walkable outdoor areas. A sheath of expanded metal stretches in front of each platform. Filigree aluminum mesh defines a second facade in front of the windows and gray plastered walls. The first floor provides space for eating with a covered outdoor area. A ramp once used by delivery trucks now serves dining guests. nk

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Site plan Scale 1:10,000

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Client: Ritter 8 building cooperative Structural design: neubauer + ernst Completion: 2019 Area: 1,762 m2 Use: Atelier/office/studio (8 units), gallery, café

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Ritterstrasse 8, Kreuzberg

BCO Architekturen

Dressed in Lightweight Concrete Office and Studio Building Ritterstrasse 8

The devastation of the Second World War and subsequent demolitions left almost nothing of the former industrial quarter between Mehringplatz and Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg. In its place, in the immediate vicinity of the Berlin Wall, post-war housing estates were laid out in long rows, a few high-rises here and there and generous green spaces in between. Even today, the streets can feel sleepy and suburban, despite being a mere ten minutes’ bike ride from Alexanderplatz. Development on Moritzplatz only began ten years ago, with the Aufbau-Haus creative complex and the Prinzessinnengärten community garden. Since then, a dozen or so new office buildings by private investors have sprung up in a very short time, especially on Ritterstrasse – some with more, many with less architectural ambition.

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A small commercial building group was able to purchase the property at Ritterstrasse 8 shortly before the price increased. Most of its members had worked in the area before and feared displacement due to rising rents, so it seemed to be a wise move to join forces and create their own office and studio space. The architects of BCO designed the building with strong references to the two older buildings next door: the Ritterhof from 1906 and the Pelikan-Haus from 1905. Their new building is conceived as a contemporary evolution of these historical neighbors. It, too, is a robust warehouse-type structure with free-form floor plans and echoes the older buildings in terms of floor heights, window sizes, and facade proportions. However, the materials, energy concept, and detailing of the new build with its plain concrete facade are clearly contemporary. A second building in the courtyard, long and narrow and flanking the firewall of its older neighbor, continues the urban structure of the other commercial courtyards. Both new builds are accessed via a common staircase in the front building; narrow walkways lead along the firewall to the rear building. To achieve a low-tech energy concept, the streetside facade is a one-meter-thick layer of lightweight, aerated concrete. Facing the south, it stores a lot of heat. Deep window reveals show the strength of the exterior wall; doubling as walk-out loggias, they provide natural shade in the summer. Open floor plans and robust interior finishes on each level offer the option for flexible layouts. Connections for shower bathrooms and kitchens even make residential use conceivable – should this ever be permitted under building law. The exterior curtains create a lively facade. The courtyard passage is exceptionally large in relation to the building’s footprint. Not only is it a historical reference but also an inviting feature that encourages a sense of community. The passageway becomes a public space: the café in the front building can set up tables, and a large display window has been created along the wall facing the neighboring building, where artists, neighbours, the café, or the offices in the buildings can show off their activities. BCO’s aspiration is for its new structure to be as flexible, robust, and variable over the long term as the century-old buildings around it. fh

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26 Office and Studio Building Ritterstrasse 8 BCO Architekturen ○

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Client: Grundstücksgesellschaft Joachimstrasse 11 Structural design: Reiner von Pollheim Building services: PIN – planende ingenieure Landscape architecture: Wirtz International (design documentation), capatti staubach (construction documentation) Completion: 2013 Area: 1,800 m2 Use: Offices, canteen, exhibitions and events, apartment

27

Joachimstrasse 11, Mitte 🌐 davidchipperfield.com @dca.berlin

David Chipperfield Architects Berlin

New Work, Old Neighborhood Office Expansion

The office of David Chipperfield Architects Berlin is located just a stone’s throw from Museum Island and the Hackesche Höfe courtyard complex. The premises for the roughly 140 employees on Joachimstrasse comprise a former piano factory and four new builds that were added in 2013, extending the office space by 1,800 m2. The cubic structures in exposed concrete complement the five-story brick building from the Wilhelminian period, located at the back of the property, and form an ensemble in the courtyard. The four-story new build on Joachimstrasse closes the gap in the perimeter block development. It blends in with its historic neighbours, taking up their eave heights. The elegant campus, combining the historic building with new independent structures that can be perceived from several sides,

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restores the architectural situation before the destruction of the war. Taking up Berlin’s typical courtyard structure, it reinterprets the interior of the block as a flowing outdoor space. The front building has spaces for exhibitions and events as well as an apartment. A central building, also four storys high, and the garden house connect directly to the old building, adding spaces for meetings and offices. A two-story structure at the center of the campus houses the office canteen. Together with the semi-public garden courtyard, which like all the outdoor spaces, was designed by Peter Wirtz, it serves as a meeting place and informal gathering space. The monolithic outer walls of the new builds are made of insulating concrete, whose quiet and restrained appearance defines both the urban space and the interiors. The single-shell construction assumes a load-­ bearing, insulating, and protective function, all at the same time. Large window openings, staggered floor by floor and set flush into the facades, allow views into and out of the building, while bringing variation to the simple stacked floor plans. The minimalistic interior design, with painted screed flooring and hand-painted wooden panels for doors and fixtures, fosters a serene atmosphere for day-to-day operations. sah

Site plan Scale 1:2,500

 1 Front building  2 Middle building

1

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 3 Courtyard build-  4 Garden house ing (existing)

2 2

3

4

27 Office Expansion David Chipperfield Architects Berlin ○

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Sections, floor plans Scale 1:400

298 WORK 

 1 Passage  2 Exhibition room  3 Courtyard

 4 Canteen  5 Conference room

 6 Reception  9 Office  7 Kitchenette 10 Bedroom  8 Residential floor floor

aa

bb

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dd

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9 9 10 10 9 9

Second floor

9 9

9 9 A A

9 9 8 8

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First floor c c

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Ground floor

27 Office Expansion David Chipperfield Architects Berlin ○

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David Chipperfield in Conversation with Sandra Hofmeister

In Dialogue with History

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David Chipperfield opened an office in Berlin in the 1990s, and over the decades since, the German capital has become a second home for the British architect. Unlike other international architects who briefly came to the city on the Spree for building projects, Chipperfield has continuously grown his team in Berlin. Today, around 140 employees work in the offices at Joachimstrasse 11 in the city’s Mitte district – just a short distance away from Museum Island, whose transformation they completed in 2019 with the new entrance building, the James Simon Gallery. David Chipperfield Architects Berlin are responsible for international projects from Zurich to Seoul.

In 1997, you won the competition to reconstruct the Neues Museum [New Museum]; shortly after that, you opened an office in Berlin. That must have been an exciting time. Indeed it was, particularly in terms of the new position Berlin found itself in these early years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and our own evolving position as an office. I arrived in Berlin at a very opportune and exciting moment with a very exciting project. The Neues Museum 302 WORK

is very closely linked to the history of the city. We faced the challenge of rediscovering East and West Berlin as a united city, and Museum Island was a symbolic site for this task. On the one hand, there was the reconstruction of the building, and on the other, reassembling a cultural heritage that had been separated into different museums in both halves of the city. Along with the architectural issues, there were infrastructural, political, and complex operational issues.

Everyday life on Joachimstrasse: International projects are managed in the Berlin office of David Chipperfield

Berlin had to find answers to key issues very quickly, and the results were not always positive; mistakes were also made. How do you see it? Like many other European cities, after the Second World War, Berlin had to deal with destruction on a huge scale. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the start of a second chapter in this process. East and West Berlin had long had their own ways of dealing with the war damage. All of a sudden, David Chipperfield in Conversation with Sandra Hofmeister

Architects. Alexander Schwarz (left) is one of five partners based in the German capital.

it was a matter of reuniting the two halves of the city as a whole again. So in the 1990s, we were dealing with issues that had been caused in the 1940s. It was as if the curtain had been opened once again, and we now had to address post-war reconstruction from a new perspective. There were many ideologies floating around in terms of how this should be tackled. Berlin in the 1990s was a melting pot of different opinions from different sections of the community, and everyone 303

had their own idea of what the city should become. Which camp prevailed at that time? I think the question of the city’s character remains open, and the struggle continues. Berlin has always been trying to invent itself from the very beginning; it is in a state of continuous reinvention. Even Berlin as we know it today is incomplete. The city will continue to develop. Architectural interventions like the Neues Museum propose a dialogue between old and new, showing the responsibility architecture has to history. How did you deal with the destruction of the Second World War, the different ideologies on both sides of the Wall, and the architectural heritage of the 19th century? Do you have a personal compass? Architects don’t often have a chance to work on projects that have cultural, emotional, and

“Personally, I can’t imagine another way to do the project than to start a dialogue with history.”

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social significance. Our work on the Neues Museum was clearly engaged with those issues, difficult as it might have seemed at times. Personally, I can’t imagine another way to do the project than to start a dialogue with history. Our design for the Neues Museum was seen as a provocation because it insisted that history is part of the context. We had a responsibility to the existing building and the original intentions of its architecture, which has its own qualities. But we were not trying to be didactic and teach people about history. I was not interested in treating the existing object as something negative but as a positive thing. In this respect, the building was rather like an archaeological find for us. Creating a brand-new building would not have made any sense. Next to Museum Island is the Humboldt Forum, whose architecture reveals a very different notion of history. The German Parliament had the East German Palace of the Republic (Palast der Republik) demolished, and the even older City Palace [Stadtschloss] rebuilt in its place. They chose Disneyland over urban repair. How does that fit with the Neues Museum and the James Simon Gallery? We were extremely privileged in the Neues Museum project. Although it had political dimensions, unlike the Humboldt Forum, it wasn’t done privately but funded entirely by the state of Berlin. That protected us from the big political discussions.

In addition, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, then president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, created an environment within which we were able to pursue an intellectual idea in dialogue with the different collaborators, such as the conservation department. I wanted a collaborative project, not an architect’s project. Of course, there were also many emotional reactions, and I was accused of a lot of things. But overall, we were able to work under conditions that fostered collaboration between the institutions and the other stakeholders. That is why

David Chipperfield in Conversation with Sandra Hofmeister

the project was not subject to the politicization issues faced by the City Palace.. You have had an office in Berlin for almost 25 years now. Have you become a “Berliner”? My involvement in Berlin was substantial for many years. It is in my blood, and I feel very attached to this city. Over the years, I have also developed an understanding of the city. It is not the most easy to be fond of; it is easier to be fond of Paris or Madrid. Berlin is a particular taste, but I have that taste,

305

and the time that I have spent there has shaped me. The Neues Museum taught us many things, not only about architecture but also about people and collaboration. It was a significant professional experience in my life. Do you have a favourite spot in Berlin? That’s a good question. In other cities I could name specific places, but Berlin is different. Berlin is a sort of totality, which I find 306 WORK

fascinating. When I have visitors in Berlin, I like to take them on a tour through the city. We start on Karl-Marx-Allee and then follow that axis through Alexanderplatz and Under den Linden to Brandenburg Gate. Then we go through the Tiergarten park to Charlottenburg and out to Postdam. Along the way, you see incredible layers of history. This route shows entirely disparate spaces and the historical discontinuities that are so particular to Berlin.

What challenges does Berlin face? I think Berlin is grappling with its identity, its personality, its ethos, and post-war character. In my experience, it is a city most uncomfortable with commercialism and consumerism. There are very heated discussions about trying to keep the city for the people. Can we not limit the cost of rent? Can we not protect the guy who runs the kebab shop on the corner? Can we keep the quality of life while keeping rampant consumerism and investment in check? This is

the type of struggle that Berlin is having with itself. In London the struggle has been lost; consumerism and investment have long since won. Berlin, on the other hand, is trying to retain its qualities as a good place to live. Overall, I think the future of society depends not on us consuming more and having more money. It’s about ensuring and growing security and quality of life for as many people as possible – that is something that cities can do. In Berlin, the battle for these qualities is not yet lost, and I have great respect for that.

“I think Berlin is grappling with its identity, its personality, its ethos, and post-war character.”

○ ○ Museum 3 Neues  ↪

p. 41 Simon Gallery 4 James  p. 63 expansion 27 Office  p. 295

○ ○ David Chipperfield in Conversation with Sandra Hofmeister

307

Client: Berlin-Friedrichsfelde Zoo Landscape architecture: hochC Landschaftsarchitektur Completion: 2019 Area: 3,556 m2 Use: Offices

26

Am Tierpark 125, Friedrichsfelde 🌐 tierpark-berlin.de

ZRS Architekten Ingenieure

Smart Update Tierpark Berlin Administration Building

As a city once divided by the Berlin Wall, Berlin has multiple locations for several institutions that exist only once in other cities. It also has two zoos. In response to the historic Zoologischer Garten (zoological garden) in Charlottenburg in the west of the city, the Tierpark (animal park) – currently Europe’s largest landscaped zoo with 160 hectares – opened in East Berlin in 1955. While the animal enclosures and buildings are quite imaginative in their design, the ancillary and administrative buildings were simple and functional. This also applies to the main administration building at the southwestern edge of the site. Despite being one of the zoo’s few street-side buildings, making it visible to the outside world, it was never a calling card for the Tierpark but merely a clumsy, gray, three-story office block.

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By the early 2000s, working conditions in the building had become unacceptable. The building was poorly insulated, making it too hot in summer and too cold in winter. The zoo moved its administrative offices, leaving the building empty for several years. It wasn’t until 2017 that the Tierpark commissioned ZRS to conduct a renovation study. They recognized a stable, flexible, sustainable concrete skeleton structure with longterm potential. With the study, the architects showed that renovation and modernization were not only possible with minimal intervention but also energy efficient and environmentally sustainable – and even cheaper than a new build. Inside, the interventions are limited to an almost complete restoration of the existing: the wall veneers, built-in furniture, stair railings,

and suspended plaster coffered ceiling were upgraded, supplemented, and restored – with a sensitivity that almost rivals the restoration of the Neues Museum. Sanitary areas and technical installations were adapted to contemporary standards, floor coverings were renewed, and the room structures were adapted to meet current needs by making minor adjustments. The main entrance was relocated to the back of the building, and an exterior glass elevator was added. The old facades were clad in louvred sandwich modules made of plaster and mineral wool, with steel frames attached to the building by ring beams. ZRS decided to simply remove the elements from the anchors and attach new modules. The new outer wall consists of wooden panels with cellulose insulation, which are connected to the old concrete skeleton as a ventilated facade, just like the original. The building thus remained almost entirely intact but was endowed with a new, lively appearance: A timber facade of vertical, dark-glazed larch boards and a distinctive pattern created by the joints between the prefabricated elements. Nesting boxes for bats and house sparrows are integrated into the light gray plaster facade on the staircase. Thanks to this clever refurbishment, the building is now a successful calling card for an institution dedicated to the study and conservation of all living things on this planet. fh 310 WORK

Site plan Scale 1:4,000

26 Tierpark Berlin Administration Building ZRS Architekten Ingenieure ○

311

Interior view of the new facade element.

Floor plans Scale 1:500

Frist floor

Ground floor

312

WORK

Historical built-in closet with a connecting door in the conference room.

Conference room after renovation with a preserved acoustic ceiling and built-in closets.

The staircase was restored almost completely to its original state.

26 Tierpark Berlin Administration Building ZRS Architekten Ingenieure ○

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Clients: Lobe Block /Olivia Reynolds and Elke Falat Structural design: Pichler Ingenieure Site supervision: Muck Petzet Architekten Completion: 2018 Area: 2,800 m2 Use: Studios, offices, restaurant

29

Böttgerstrasse 16, Wedding 🌐 lobe.berlin

Brandlhuber + Emde, Burlon, Muck Petzet Architekten

Logic of Indeterminacy Lobe Block Terrace House

The Lobe Block is a cheerful, neo-brutalist concrete mountain that fits surprisingly well into its heterogeneous surroundings in Wedding. The client Olivia Reynolds had approached the architects Arno B ­ randlhuber, Thomas Burlon, and Markus Emde with the request to design a flexible-use studio building, whose spaces she wanted to fill with select tenants from the creative industries. It was to have enough common areas to allow group creativity to emerge and potentially be used for residential purposes. Reynolds had found a plot of land in an industrial area less than 100 meters from the Gesundbrunnen train station. The three architects, who with their office b+ often collaborate with external partners on a project-by-project basis, worked on this project with Muck Petzet Architekten.

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Together, they developed the basic form of a stepped building for the deep site, with deep floors lit only from the north and south. To the east, the new building adjoins the 40-meter-long firewall of the neighboring building; to the west, its closed concrete wall serves as a new firewall. The curved property boundary becomes a rugged relief with vertical offsets. Attached to each floor is a 6-meter-wide terrace. Facing south, they connect almost seamlessly with the interior through a glass facade with floor-to-ceiling sliding doors. Two sculptural staircases connect these terraces to form a semi-public space. These spaces serve as meeting places, where tenants meet on their way to their studio or office, during breaks, or at events on the terrace. When it rains, the water runs down the sloping terrace surfaces and stairs, transforming the building into a giant rock with a flowing waterfall. Towards the street in the north, the terracing at the rear forms a negative: The double-height ground level recedes 7.50 meters from the road, creating a covered forecourt beneath the projecting upper floors. The main access leads through a wide passage to the garden side and the two outdoor staircases. According to the architects, the “logic of indeterminacy” applies both inside and out. Although the building is designed for commercial use, the visible installations and lightweight walls made of plasterboard or maritime pine plywood allow for easy conversion to residential use at any time. Each unit has connections for kitchens and bathrooms, and all building code requirements for residential buildings were considered, such as fire protection and energy-saving regulations. Inside, the boundaries between living and working, inside and outside, community and privacy become blurred. The architecture asks its users not to take these limits for granted but to find them individually and shape the space according to their own needs – and to adapt it again and again. fh

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Site plan Scale 1:4,000

29 Lobe Block Terrace House Brandlhuber + Emde, Burlon, Muck Petzet Architekten ○

317

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aa  1 Forecourt  2 Coworking space  3 Kitchen  4 Restaurant

Section, floor plans Scale 1:750

 5 Central waste room  6 Art gallery  7 Passageway

15

 8 Children’s play house  9 Void 10 Office 15 15 15 11 Storage

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12 Technical room 13 Terrace 14 Yoga studio 15 Art studio

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Fourth floor

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29 Lobe Block Terrace House Brandlhuber + Emde, Burlon, Muck Petzet Architekten ○ a

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Terrace building, reinterpreted in Berlin: Large open areas in front of the studios and two outdoor stair­

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cases foster encounters between users and visitors.

29 Lobe Block Terrace House Brandlhuber + Emde, Burlon, Muck Petzet Architekten ○

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29 Lobe Block Terrace House Brandlhuber + Emde, Burlon, Muck Petzet Architekten ○

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Client: Signa, Ostbahnhof Immobilien Structural design: Bollinger + Grohmann TGA: Ingenieurgesellschaft Meinhardt Fulst Building physics: Müller-BBM Landscape architecture: Yewo Landscapes Completion: 2021 Area: 55,400 m2 Use: Offices, retail

30

Koppenstrasse 8, Friedrichshain @upberlin.online

Jasper Architects, Gewers Pudewill

Canyons for More Light Up! Berlin

In the glass cube behind the green space at Herrmann-Stöhr-Platz north of the Ostbahnhof train station, around 2,500 employees of an online retailer for cosmetics and fashion go about their work in a flexible office space. Prismatic incisions on all four sides break up the solid volume and bring daylight into the building. Today, the renovated building is barely reminiscent of the former department store, once covered in a facade of orange and turquoise mosaic tiles. The building was originally erected in 1979 for Centrum, an East German department store chain. After German reunification, other department stores used the building. Due to poor sales, its last retail occupant closed its doors in 2016, and Signa Group launched a competition for its refurbishment, including a contemporary utilization

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concept. With their idea of turning it into office space for Berlin’s startup scene, Jasper Architects emerged as the winner. In collaboration with Gewers Pudewill, they transformed the iconic department store into airy, light-filled workspaces for the digital age. The planners had the precast concrete facade removed, leaving only the original reinforced concrete skeleton of the solid block with its 80 � 80 meter footprint. What remained were four old circulation cores, plus ceilings and columns that rhythmically subdivide the floor plan every 12 meters. By preserving the supporting structure instead of building a new one, 8,000 tonnes of CO2 could be saved. To bring daylight into the deep floor plans, entire ceiling bays were removed with a circular saw, and new terraces were added to the perimeter areas. Depending on the incidence of sunlight and the position of the cores, the “canyons” – as Martin J­asper calls the prismatic incisions – vary in width and terrace arrangement. Two new floors and a stacked floor with a roof terrace compensate for the space that was subtracted. The building is wrapped in a facade of story-high glass elements. Every fourth facade module is made of opaque metal, reducing the amount of transparent exterior surface and, therefore, the amount of heat entering the building. Open office spaces are arranged along the facades and landscaped terraces. Further inside, a pleasant working environment is ensured by various soundproofed room boxes, cooking islands, and meeting spaces, some of which are located in old elevator shafts. On the third floor, dressing rooms and photo studios are spread across the flexible space, which is where the tenant produces the images for its website. With floor heights of 5.40 meters, the unfinished concrete surfaces of the supporting structure, and building services visible behind semi-transparent white ceiling panels, the office lofts exude industrial charm. At night, when Up! is illuminated from within and its orange and green floor coverings shine through the glass facade, the building evokes a hint of its history as a department store and the former mosaic tile facade. According to the architects, the effect was “pure coincidence.” bz

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Deep voids were cut into the building volume on all four sides. The widest incision is at the main entrance to the south.

30 Up! Berlin Jasper Architects, Gewers Pudewill ○

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Conversion concept for the cubic structure with 80-meter-long sides: The challenge was to direct as much daylight as possible into the introverted rooms of the existing building without reducing the volume.

30 Up! Berlin Jasper Architects, Gewers Pudewill ○

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30 Up! Berlin Jasper Architects, Gewers Pudewill ○

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Appendix

333

Architects 3XN

Kanonbådsvej 8 DK-1437 København K

🌐 3xn.com @3xnarchitects

AFF Architekten

Hauptstrasse 13 10317 Berlin

🌐 aff-architekten.com @aff_architects

8 ○

AHM Architekten

Gutenbergstrasse 4 10587 Berlin

🌐 ahm-architekten.de

25 ○

Atelier Loegler

ul. Mazowiecka 84/5 PL-30-023 Kraków

🌐 loegler.pl

Atelier Loidl

Am Tempelhofer Berg 6 10965 Berlin

🌐 atelier-loidl.de @atelier_loidl

6 ○

BCO Architekturen

Mittenwalder Strasse 11 10961 Berlin

🌐 bco-architekturen.com

26 ○

Barkow Leibinger

Schillerstrasse 94 10625 Berlin

🌐 barkowleibinger.com @barkowleibinger

Brandlhuber + Emde, Burlon

Brunnenstrasse 9 10119 Berlin

🌐 bplus.xyz @bplus.xyz

29 ○

brandt + simon architekten

Marienburger Strasse 18/19 10405 Berlin

🌐 brandtundsimon.de @brandtundsimon

20 ○

Bundschuh Architekten

Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse 45 10178 Berlin

🌐 bundschuh.net @bundschuh_architekten

23 ○

David Chipperfield ­Architects Berlin

Joachimstrasse 11 10119 Berlin

🌐 davidchipperfield.com @dca.berlin

E2A Architekten

Buckhauser­strasse 34 CH-8048 Zürich

🌐 e2a.ch @e2a_book

21 ○

Eyrich Hertweck Architekten

Osloer Strasse 16 13359 Berlin

🌐 eharchitekten.de

16 ○

FAR frohn&rojas

Waldenser­strasse 25 10551 Berlin

🌐 f-a-r.net @far_frohnrojas

11 ○

Fugmann Janotta Partner

Belziger Strasse 25 10823 Berlin

🌐 fjpberlin.de

Gewers Pudewill

Schlesische Strasse 27 10997 Berlin

🌐 gewers-pudewill.de @gewerspudewill

gmp Architekten

Hardenbergstrasse 4–5 10623 Berlin

🌐 gmp.de @gmp.architects

Heide & von Beckerath

Kantstrasse 152 10623 Berlin

🌐 heidevonbeckerath.com @heidevonbeckerath

12 ○

hg merz

Danckelmannstrasse 10 14059 Berlin

🌐 hgmerz.com @hg.merz

9 ○

334

↪ p. 236

↪ p. 19

↪ p. 241

3 ○ 4 ○ 27 ○

↪ p. 19

30 ○ ↪ p. 266

ifau – Institut für angewandte Urbanistik

Dresdener Strasse 26 10999 Berlin

🌐 ifau.berlin

12 ○

Jasper ­Architects

Spreepalais am Dom Anna-Louisa-Darsch-Strasse 2 10178 Berlin

🌐 jasperarchitects.com @jasperarchitects

30 ○

Kersten Kopp Architekten

Rheinstrasse 45 12161 Berlin

🌐 kersten-kopp.de @kersten_kopp

19 ○

Kombinativ Büro für Architektur

Plantagen­strasse 31 13347 Berlin

🌐 kombinativ.de @kombinativ

10 ○

Love architecture + urbanism

Schönhauser Allee 6–7 10119 Berlin

🌐 love-home.com @lovearchitectureandurbanism

Muck Petzet Architekten

Landwehrstrasse 37 80336 München

🌐 muck-petzet.com @muck-petzet

Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge

Sophienstrasse 25 10178 Berlin

🌐 meyer-grohbruegge.com @meyergrohbruegge

O&O Baukunst

Leibnizstrasse 60 10629 Berlin

🌐 ortner-ortner.com @ortnerortner

5 ○

OMA

Weena-Zuid 158 3012 NC NL-Rotterdam

🌐 oma.com @oma.eu

22 ○

Praeger Richter Architekten

Florastrasse 86a Vorderhaus 1. OG 13187 Berlin

🌐 praegerrichter.de @praegerrichterarchitekten

14 ○

raumlaborberlin

Am Flutgraben 3 12435 Berlin

🌐 raumlabor.net @raumlaborberlin

1 ○

Anne Raupach Architektur

Steinweg 49 34260 Kaufungen

🌐 anneraupach.com

17 ○

Richter Musikowski

Ritterstrasse 2 10969 Berlin

🌐 richtermusikowski.com @richtermusikowski

2 ○

Robertneun

Bülowstrasse 56/57 10783 Berlin

🌐 robertneun.de @robertneun

13 ○

Sauerbruch Hutton

Lehrter Strasse 57, Haus 2 10557 Berlin

🌐 sauerbruchhutton.de @sauerbruchhutton

Scharabi Architekten

Fehrbelliner Strasse 91 10119 Berlin

🌐 scharabi.de @scharabi_architects

17 ○

Tanja Lincke Architekten

Baumschulenstrasse 1b 12437 Berlin

🌐 tanja-lincke-architekten.com @tanjalinckearchitekten

18 ○

Zanderroth Architekten

Dunckerstrasse 63 10439 Berlin

🌐 zanderroth.de @zanderrotharchitekten

15 ○

ZRS Architekten Ingenieure

Schlesische Strasse 26, Aufgang A 10997 Berlin

🌐 zrs.berlin @zrsberlin

28 ○

↪ p. 130

29 ○ ↪ p. 12

7 ○ 24 ○

335

Imprint & Image Credits Editors Authors Interviews Project management Editorial team Translation Proofreading Graphic design Architectural drawings Production and DTP Reproduction Printing and Binding Paper

Florian Heilmeyer, Sandra Hofmeister Florian Heilmeyer (fh), Sandra Hofmeister (sah), Jasmin Jouhar (jj), Norman Kietzmann (nk), Barbara Zettel (bz) David Chipperfield, Tanja Lincke, Matthias Sauerbruch Sandra Hofmeister Michaela Busenkell, Michelle Grau, Charlotte Petereit, Jasmin Rankl, Marlene Schwemer Alisa Kotmair Meriel Clemett strobo B M (Matthias Friederich, Luis Schneider, Julian von Klier) Lisa Hurler, Barbara Kissinger Roswitha Siegler, Simone Soesters Ludwig Media, AT–Zell am See Schleunungdruck GmbH, Marktheidenfeld Munken Lynx zartweiß 120 g, Bengali light green 80 g (content), FLY ultra white 400 g (cover) © 2022, first edition DETAIL Business Information GmbH, Munich, detail.de 978-3-95553-591-9 (Print) ISBN 978-3-95553-592-6 (E-Book) This book is printed on FSC certified paper, meaning it was responsibly sourced from certified forests, which are managed with respect for the environment and for the people who live and work in them, recycled sources, or other controlled sources.

This work is protected by copyright. The rights conferred thereby, in particular those of translation, reprint, lecture, extraction of illustrations and drawings, microfilming or reproduction by other means and storage in data processing systems are reserved. The rights to translation, printing, presentation, extraction of illustrations and drawings, microfilming or reproduction in other ways and storage in data processing systems are reserved, even if only excerpts are used. Reproduction of this work or parts thereof, even in individual cases, is only permitted within the limits of the statutory provisions of the Copyright Act as amended. It is generally subject to remuneration. Infringements are subject to the penal provisions of copyright law. The contents of this book have been researched and compiled to the best of our knowledge and belief and with the utmost care. No responsibility is taken for the completeness and correctness of the contributions. No legal claims can be derived from the contents of this book. Image Credits: Adenis, Pierre, p. 28/29 Alberts, Andrew, p. 140 –147 Bitter, Jan, p. 16/17, 90 – 96, 132, 133, 160 top, 160 bottom, 165 top, 188 –193, 274, 277, 278/279, 280 bpk /Berlinische Galerie / ­Hermann Rückwardt, p. 55 bpk /Geheimes Staatsarchiv, SPK, p. 264 top bpk /Kunstbibliothek, SMB, Photothek Willy Römer/  Willy Römer, p. 58 bpk /Kupferstich Kabinett, SMB /Jörg P. Anders, p. 52 bpk /Stiftung Preußischer ­Kulturbesitz, ART+COM, p. 54 bpk /Zentralarchiv, SMB, p. 42, 46 bottom, 57 brandt+simon, p. 217– 218 Bredt, Marcus, p. 270, 273 Brundert, Bernd, p. 125 top Brüning, Verena, p. 194, 200 Castro, Diego, p. 120 Crabbe, Matthew, p. 308 – 313 Ebener, Marcus, p. 205 Eichner, Tina, Solutions, p. 20 Esch, HG, p. 324, 328, 330/331 FHXB Friedrichshain-­ Kreuzberg Museum © S.T.E.R.N. GmbH, p. 156 Friedel, Andreas, p. 166 –173 Gardiner, Rory, p. 242, 245 top 336

Gehrke, Andreas, p. 222– 232 Ghinitoiu, Laurin, p. 128/129, 256 – 263, Ghinitoiu, Laurin courtesy OMA, p. 248 – 255 Goodwin, Marc, p. 101 Huthmacher, Werner, p. 148, 152 –155, 160 center, 210 – 215, p. 288 – 292 IMAGO /Jens Schicke, p. 267 top IMAGO /Günter Schneider, p. 267 bottom Koenning, Nils, p. 327 top, 329 bottom Kojima, Yasu, p. 246 Küenzlen, Martin, p. 159 Landesarchiv Berlin, F Rep. 290 (02) Nr. 0025804/photo: Kiel, Willy, p. 269 bottom Landesarchiv Berlin, F Rep. 290 (02) Nr. 0073327/photo: Sass, Bert, p. 264 bottom Lanoo, Julien, p. 82 – 89 Löffelhardt, Markus, p. 165 bottom McMahon, Benjamin, p. 300 Meckel, Dawin, p. 106, 111, 112/113 Meinel, Udo, p. 114, 182 –186 Menges, Simon, p. 62, 66/67, 68, 174 –181, 294, 297 bottom, 298 bottom Mørk, Adam, p. 236/237

Müller, Jörg F. (bpk), p. 117, 118 Nast, Michael, p. 219 – 221 Neusser, Peter, p. 284 Norlander, Rasmus, p. 247 Noshe, p. 163, 198 –199, 202, 206 – 209 Obkircher, Philipp, p. 150 Ortner&Ortner, p. 74, 77, 79 top Overmeer, Erica, p. 318, 320, 321 Reyle, Anselm, p. 204 Richter Musikowski Archi­ tekten, p. 39 Richters, Christian, p. 282, 285 top, 287 top Rokitta, Christoph, p. 123 Rose, Corinne, p. 240/241 Sauerbruch Hutton, p. 102 Schink, Hans-Christian, p. 109 Schlegelmilch, Cordia, p. 125 bottom Schnepp Renou, p. 30, 33 – 38, 75, 76, 78, 80/81, 317, 322/323 Schöneberg, Marion for ­David Chipperfield Architects, p. 303, 306 Schuller, Jasmin, p. 130/131 Seifert, Daniel, p. 23 bottom Stark-Otto, p. 267 center Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloß /photo: Alexander Schippel, p. 60 Thalhofer, Martina, p. 72 Tomaschko, Victoria, p. 24, 27 Uhalde, Cèlia, p. 70/71

Von Becker, David, p. 64, 134, 137, 138, 314 Von Bruchhausen, Jörg, p. 46 top Zanin, Marco, Fabrica, for Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, p. 18/19, 269 top Zintel, Urban, p. 98 Zscharnt, Ute, p. 164 Zscharnt, Ute for David ­Chipperfield Architects, cover, p. 40, 43 bottom, 44/45, 48, 49, 50/51, 65 top, 238/239, 297 top, 298 top, 305 All photos and drawings OMA, p. 249–255: © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2022 The publisher would like to ­express its sincere gratitude to all those who have assisted in the production of this book, be it through providing photos, granting permission to ­reproduce their documents, or providing other information. All the drawings were specially produced for this publica­ tion. In some cases, we were unable to establish copyright ownership; however, copyright is assured. Please notify us accordingly in such instances.