Client:
Bryan Adams
Location:
Berlin, Germany
Cost:
Undisclosed
Completed:
June 2017
Spreehalle provides space and volume to be fitted out by the end users - ‘raw space’. It is evocative of its industrial ancestry and provides space for artists, creative users and small businesses to live and work within ateliers realising the ambitions of the client, Bryan Adams.
The mixed-use regeneration project is in the southeastern Berlin district of Treptow-Köpenick on the river Spree providing live/work ateliers together with a café, bookshop and other commercial activities at ground floor level.
Working with an existing industrial building, we inserted an open courtyard into the centre of the two linear main halls. By removing the roof coverings but retaining the steel structures we have created an outdoor space; a sanctuary away from the more public exterior and a communal space for enjoyment.
A new two storey addition was proposed at the first-floor roof level of the previous office building to the west within the designated height permitted for the area. The linear building was divided into eight ateliers dictated by existing window positions and a new two storey structure replaced the single storey former toilet block to the east.
The two storey addition is in part a double height volume with linear north light, an industrial mezzanine and steel sliding doors which open onto a balcony overlooking the river. The existing two floors are left as found.
The users are able to erect whatever structures or mezzanines they choose within the shell dispelling the idea of a rigid, pre-ordained space.
"Design is not about decorating functional forms - it is about creating forms that accord with the character of the object" Peter Behrens
Spreehalle is part of the wider former industrial area of Berlin that is evolving through the careful investment in the infrastructure and public spaces by the council of Treptow-Köpenick. A new public square and new pedestrian bridge have already been constructed together with boat moorings along the riverbank.
The site is part of the extensive former AEG Kabelwerk group of buildings from the penultimate turn of the century which at that time had Peter Behrens as its Design Director, designer of the influential and revolutionary AEG turbine hall in the Berlin district of Moabit.
The main hall buildings express the steel and brick structure of their construction most evidently and we wished to preserve this as much as possible along with the industrial patina accumulated during their history.
This established the underlying thinking of the project: industrial, straightforward, simple but above all indeterminate.
2018 Otto Borst Preis
Client: Bryan Adams
Architects: Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, London and Hoidn Wang Partner with Sauerzapfe Architekten, Berlin.
Structural Engineers: CRP Bauingenieure GmbH
Services Engineer: Planende Ingenieure gmbh
Fire Engineer: Berliner Brandschutz
Photography: Werner Huthmacher Photography/ Bryan Adams
Film: Directed by Tobias Ross-Southall
Film Music: ‘Everything in its right place’ Brad Mehldau
