Lobe Block / Terrassenhaus Berlin is a studio house in the Berlin district of Gesundbrunnen that combines creative work with a restaurant, a yoga studio and urban gardening.

Terrassenhaus Berlin is a multi-use atelier and gallery building designed by Brandlhuber + Emde, Burlon & Muck Petzet Architekten. It is located on a former scrapyard by the railway track in the district of Berlin-Wedding. As an update of the terraced house typology, the mixed-use building embeds itself in a heterogeneous neighborhood of commercial and residential blocks, adjacent to 1900s dwellings and a climbing hall.
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The building is a private initiative by client Lobe Block. It was initially intended to be a smaller intervention of exhibition and commercial spaces inspired by a previous project by the architects, Brunnenstrasse 9. However, the designers felt that Berlin’s rising property prices and construction costs were pushing architects to create smaller, less social spaces. Thus, they convinced the client to construct a large mixed-use building that would maximize the volume available and not sacrifice large, high-quality public spaces that could potentially benefit the neighborhood.

Fashion brand Balenciaga has opened its first retail location in Berlin, which continues the brand's Raw Architecture aesthetic and boasts monolithic concrete slabs and distressed surfaces.

The Grade II-listed exterior of the fashion label’s new retail location belies its brutalist ground floor interiors, which are all slabs of concrete and strip lighting. The design is part of Balenciaga’s ‘Raw Architecture’ concept which, according to the fashion house, mixes elements from construction sites and abandoned spaces with more refined features.

Mirrored glass, grey curtains and aluminium shelving cover the walls in front of and between the aged concrete, while thin metal clothes railings add a touch of delicacy, yet underline the store's industrial setting.

"Heavily aged hanging bars add to a reduced material palette and survey of elements representative of varying eras, at once emphasizing the vastness of their space and the complexity of urban experience," said the fashion house.

The Raw Architecture aesthetic is carried over to the store's furnishings, with distressed, worn-leather seating placed in groups of four throughout the store to add to its decaying look. Balenciaga explained that it used aged and distressed concrete in an effort to "echo Berlin's modernist architecture legacy".

David Chipperfield aims to retain the spirit of the ruin as he merges new and in his Neues Museum restoration.

The Neues Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island was designed by Friedrich August Stüler and built between 1841 and 1859. Extensive bombing during the Second World War left the building in ruins, with entire sections missing completely and others severely damaged. Few attempts at repair were made after the war, and the structure was left exposed to nature. In 1997, David Chipperfield Architects won the international competition for the rebuilding of the Neues Museum in collaboration with Julian Harrap.

The key aim of the project was to recomplete the original volume, and encompassed the repair and restoration of the parts that remained after the destruction of the Second World War. The new exhibition rooms are built of large format pre-fabricated concrete elements consisting of white cement mixed with Saxonian marble chips. Formed from the same concrete elements, the new main staircase repeats the original without replicating it, and sits within a majestic hall that is preserved only as a brick volume, devoid of its original ornamentation.

In 2009, after more than sixty years as a ruin, the Neues Museum reopened to the public as the third restored building on Museum Island, exhibiting the collections of the Egyptian Museum and the Museum of Pre- and Early History.

The minimalist oval chapel, designed by Berlin architects Rudolf Reitermann and Peter Sassenroth, was completed in 2000 and consists of a monumental rammed-earth core structure flanked with a translucent facade of wooden louvers.

While the warm aesthetics of the building and its use of sustainable natural methods should be enough to please any fan of modern green architecture, what’s perhaps more moving is how these aspects have been used to serve a symbolic and spiritual purpose for its parishioners. Not only is the Chapel sited on the foundation of its pre-war predecessor, but also within its thick clay walls are embedded the remains of the former Church of Reconciliation which was demolished by the GDR in 1985 (citing “security measures” due to its location between Soviet watchtowers).

In comparison to the gleaming glass and commercial neon that characterizes the majority of Berlin’s in-fill construction since reunification, its uplifting to see a structure like the Reconciliation Chapel paying such quiet homage to its sober history while also presenting a fresh face forward to the future.

KÖNIG GALERIE was founded in Berlin by Johann König in 2002. In May 2015, KÖNIG GALERIE took up St. Agnes which was renovated by Arno Brandlhuber.

The program’s focus is on interdisciplinary, concept-oriented and space-based approaches in a variety of media including sculpture, video, sound, painting, printmaking, photography and performance. Currently represents 40 international emerging and established artists, mostly belonging to a younger generation.

In May 2015, KÖNIG GALERIE took up St. Agnes, a monumental former church built in the 1960s in the Brutalist style, where museum-like exhibitions take place in two different spaces, the former chapel and nave.

Photographed by Andres Jasso

In a former brewery in Berlin, Neukölln, the KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art offers installations, performances, paintings and other art forms.

The KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art has been presenting temporary exhibitions of international contemporary art since 2016. In addition to painting, sculpture, installations, and performance, film and video presentations are another focus of the institution’s programme. The KINDL sees itself as a place for producing and discussing contemporary art and also reacts to recent artistic developments. The exhibition projects are accompanied by an extensive programme of discourse and educational offerings that aims to contribute to the current debate.

In addition to the three-storey machine house, in which monographic and thematic exhibitions are presented in parallel, the 20-meter-high hall of the boiler house offers a spectacular exhibition situation. Once a year an artist is invited to realize a specific work for this room, which can be seen here for around nine months.

Under the artistic direction of curator, Andreas Fiedler, the center holds several major exhibitions each year, along with artist talks, lectures and concerts.