“From the very first moment we entered it, it was like an enchanted place that was left behind for decades, overgrown with vegetation,” says Almut Grüntuch-Ernst, one-half of the architect duo. “You enter and are struck by this forgotten feeling. You’re inside this romantic, castle-like structure erected at a time when there were no other buildings around it, and all you hear is birdsong.”

Converting the former Charlottenburg Women’s Prison to a hotel that’s more than just a gimmick was no small undertaking. The walls, as you might guess, are incredibly thick, and the architects had to cut through them to enlarge windows and create new doors. The guest rooms couldn’t be limited to the unworkably tiny prison cell size, either, so cells were merged to accommodate comfortable spaces with ensuite bathrooms. “It’s about inverting the building’s configuration and spatial concepts, from an antisocial place to a very social place,” Almut told Design Hotels.

Avoiding any sense of exploitation in the theme was a high priority. The architects carefully considered how to complete the adaptation in a sensitive way, determining which elements from the past should and shouldn’t be left visible. This prison’s history is particularly complex, as German resistance and anti-Nazi activists were held there during World War II. After the war, it was an administrative office for a while, then a juvenile detention center, which closed in 1985. Afterwards, the building was used as a storage facility and a set for several movie productions (including Academy Award-winning The Reader starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes) before finally being transformed into the Wilmina.

The architects used the facade-facing courthouse building for the hotel lobby and built a new extension for Wilmina’s restaurant, which connects the former courthouse to the prison’s U-shaped cell block. The restaurant consists of bricks reclaimed from the construction process. 44 guest rooms are spread across the five levels of the block, arranged on narrow galleries around an atrium. Each one still features bars on the windows and the original cell door, but is clad in minimalist, mostly-white furnishings for an airy feel that’s anything but claustrophobic.

The top level features a penthouse suite, and on the roof is a terrace, library, bar, spa, and gym. Today, with warm amber lights glowing within large glazed openings and lush courtyard gardens, the former prison is surprisingly welcoming, beckoning guests to come inside with open minds.

“Wilmina is a place of discoveries, of surprising visual links, ambiguous layers of space, and traces of the past,” say the architects. “Wilmina is also a place of natural tranquillity, relaxation, and comfort — an oasis in the middle of the city.”

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The project fit with the Home and Garden store’s mission to “encourage people to be as creative as possible, develop their own DIY projects, and set themselves no limits.” The project was especially impressive “because the shoe, including the pool, is made entirely of materials that are available from Hornbach,” the company explained in a press release.

“With the help of assembly instructions, anyone could build furniture at home,” it continued. “With the Sneaker Pool, Hornbach is taking a step into the sneaker scene.”

While that might seem like a strange direction for a hardware chain to take, off-the-wall advertising is the norm for Hornbach. “Sneakers and pool don’t go together thematically? We say: Of course it fits! Crazy projects are in our DNA! With the Hornbach Sneaker Pool, we show how far the current love of sneakers can go.”

Earlier this year, the DIY brand teamed up with production agency Heimat on a zany two-minute commercial featuring neglected yard plants that abandoned their native soil to take a raucous joy ride to Hornbach. On the way, they run over garbage cans, compete in streetcar races, and get ticketed by a police officer.

“There’s a bit of anarchy,” Heimat founder Guido Heffels says of the brand’s approach to advertising. “A bit of giving people a good feeling whenever they create, and whatever they work on.”

The company is no stranger to collabs either, having most recently worked with Chinese visual artist Ai Weiwei, “who developed a complete work of art from DIY materials to recreate at home.” Before that, they worked with “Danish designer Sigurd Larsen and Japanese architect Yo Shimada [to design] pieces of furniture purely from DIY materials.”

In addition to working with shoe store 43halb, the hardware brand also enlisted production company Neulant van Exel for help in assembling the enormous footwear fixture. The giant Sneaker Pool was unveiled at an exclusive launch event, garnering comments that ranged from “Sensational!” to “Kinda bizarre” to “Just amazing!” At least a few guests were allowed to try out the pool during the gala.

During the event, the company explained, “The Hornbach Sneaker Pool is a tongue-in-cheek reminder that the outdoor pool season is in full swing and that anything is possible with the wide pool range from Hornbach.”

They added, “For Hornbach, sneakers and DIY are both means of creative self-expression. This playful and colossal project merges the two outlets.”

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Aesthetically, the design is a significant departure from that of the Tesla Gigafactories in Shanghai and Nevada, both of which are a lot more utilitarian. In response to fan questions on Twitter, Musk has implied that the plant will have a few fun functional differences, too, saying “might be an indoor/outdoor rave space on the roof.” Is he kidding about that? Who knows. He just named his newborn son “X AE A-12,” after all, so it’s anybody’s guess.

Announced in November 2019, Tesla Giga Berlin will be the automaker’s first full vehicle factory in Europe. The factory will help Tesla lower prices on its vehicles on the continent by producing them locally, so they don’t have to be shipped all the way from California. The facility, set on a wooded 741-acre property, is in the early stages of construction, but paused temporarily due to concerns raised by environmentalists over potential threats to local water supplies and old-growth trees on-site.

A German court recently gave Tesla permission to resume construction, and the company pledges on its website to replant an area three times the size of the factory’s plot with mixed trees native to the local habitat in collaboration with local environmental experts. “We are also working to ensure plenty of clean drinking water through water-saving measures in the factory, as well as a structural solution with and for the community in the medium term,” reads the company website.

“Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg is the next phase of Tesla’s presence in Europe. We already operate an assembly facility for Model S and Model X in Tilburg, the Netherlands. In addition, Tesla Grohmann Automation in Prüm, Germany specializes in automation of our production processes. In total, we currently already employ around 5,500 people in Europe.”

“Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg will have a solar roof and aims to use renewable electricity to help Germany and Brandenburg achieve its ambitious ‘Energiewende’ objectives. We aim to maximize the benefits of the location’s excellent passenger and freight rail connections by building an on-site rail freight yard, and making it as attractive as possible to commute to the factory by rail.”

Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory produces Model 3 electric motors and battery packs in addition to Tesla’s energy storage products, Powerwall and Powerpack. The company broke ground on that factory in June 2014, and while it’s currently operational with more than 1.9 million square feet completed, it’s only about 30 percent done. Once complete, Tesla expects the Gigafactory to be the biggest building in the world — one entirely powered by renewable energy, to boot.

The company also operates a factory in Fremont, California, which is currently in the process of doubling in size to almost 10 million square feet. Employing about 10,000 workers, the facility produces Tesla vehicles like the Model S, Model X, and Model 3.

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The result was Terrassenhaus Berlin: a dramatic concrete structure featuring a series of built-in external terraces. Muck Petzet Architekten and Brandlhuber + Emde, Burlon convinced the client to make it a mixed-use facility, adding both private residences and a public rooftop terrace to the planned gallery spaces.

Fitting right in with Berlin’s stark concrete architecture and the remnants of its divided past, the five-story building creates a sort of artificial mountain that visually references the industrial heritage of its surrounding area. As the architects put it, the project “exchanges economic benefit for collective space.”

Aimed at overcoming the respective separations between living and working and commercial and residential projects, Terrassenhaus offsets flexible open-plan apartments with both the exhibition spaces originally envisioned by the property owners and a publicly accessible exterior. A lack of interior walls within the apartments lets them adapt to each individual renter, mimicking the look of the galleries around them. Shared color and material palettes across the entire project (inside and out) give it a cohesive and almost monolithic appearance.

Each one of the exterior’s five levels is set back 5.7 meters (18.7 feet) from the one below it, creating a giant stepped staircase on one side and a sort of negative staircase on the other, which itself becomes a shade-providing overhang for the ground floor. External stairs connect the communal garden with the public roof. Residents share terraces with their neighbors, each featuring floor-to-ceiling reflective curtains that can be drawn across the glazed facades for shade and privacy when desired.

If you’re wondering what it would be like to live in a building that’s constantly being climbed by random strangers, the architects suggest that perhaps we should all be a little more open to unexpected interactions with each other every day.

“Social norms in architecture structure our expectations of living together and often reduce the complexity of social interaction,” they explain. “At the same time, they form a framework in which the users can behave safely and freely.”

“The Terrassenhaus Berlin manages to raise the questions of private and public by introducing a building model for the urban context. With their abnormal depth, the terraces create a degree of distance and privacy, while at the same time, the external staircases — connecting the communal garden with the public roof — produce encounters of every kind, wanted and unwanted.”

The innovative Terrassenhaus Berlin is certainly one of a kind, and it’s among 40 projects chosen for the coveted Mies Award 2019.

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This vibrant exhibit guides visitors through all the colors of the rainbow, each one of which is focused on a different part of LGBTQ gaming’s 33-year journey. Explore iconic memorabilia through the years, watch video interviews with pioneering designers, marvel at a treasure trove of fan art, and learn more about the historical titles and characters that helped lead the genre to cultural prominence.

The Stars of the Exhibit

Birdo was first introduced to the world by Nintendo in their 1988 release Super Mario Bros. 2. The game’s original manual claimed that Birdo was a boy who “thinks he is a girl,” and that he would prefer to be called “Birdetta.” However, subsequent releases of Super Mario Bros. 2 never referred to the character’s preferred name. More perplexing was that in the newer Mario Tennis series, Nintendo not only ignored the gender identity question entirely, but they also decided to make Birdo the girlfriend of Yoshi. Yet in numerous future games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Birdo’s male body is still alluded to.

In 1989, CM Ralph released Caper in the Castro, one of the first overtly queer video games to go public. In the game, you play as detective Tracker McDyke, sleuthing through the streets of San Francisco to find her missing buddy and drag queen Tessy LaFemme.

Other must-sees at the Rainbow Arcade include the indie games section’s Queers in Love at the End of the World, a 10-second text-based game by Anna Anthropy that addresses intimacy and the apocalypse, and Dietrich Squinkifer’s 2013 Dominique Pamplemousse, an engrossing detective musical centering on gender and the economy in a stop-motion format.

Back in 2016, Dr. Adrienne Shaw created an online LGTBQ video game archive — the first effort of its kind anywhere in the world. Shaw says of the project: “Until the archive, there just wasn’t a historical understanding of LGBTQ content in this medium. This often means that new games with queer content are perceived as a radical break from the norm, rather than additions to an existent cultural history. It makes it really easy to forget that this kind of content has always been in games.”

More recently, Shaw teamed up with Jan Schnorrenberg from the Schwules Museum and German gaming journalist Sarah Rudolph to curate the Rainbow Arcade.

The Slow Turning Tides

Opposition to diversifying the “conventional” gaming tradition of mainly serving the straight male audience has been around for decades. In 2006, the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Gaming) World of Warcraft rejected a player’s request to establish the first LGBT guild, citing worries about persecution from other members. Luckily enough, the developers ultimately conceded, and now today the game hosts a yearly pride parade.

Maybe there really is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The post Berlin’s New Rainbow Arcade Celebrates the History of LGBTQ Gaming first appeared on Dornob.

Deutsche Bahn, the German national rail network, will soon try playing atonal music in Berlin’s Hermannstrasse station in hopes of reducing crime and deterring loitering. This music has been proven to agitate some listeners, creating a feeling of anxiety within them by increasing their blood pressure and level of auditory discomfort. DB hopes that the music, which is decidedly unmelodic, will sufficiently deter crime without disturbing all the passengers. Friedemann Kessler, the company’s Eastern Regional Manager, says: “Few people find it beautiful — many people perceive it as something to run away from.”

This strategy is proving to be quite controversial, as while the station has experienced numerous instances of crime, including a man kicking a woman down the stairs and high rates of drug use, it is also commonly used as a refuge by homeless people. Initiative Neue Musik, an organization that celebrates contemporary music, has even launched a counter-initiative in response to the trial. Members of INM have explicitly spoken out against the trial, believing that “art should not be weaponized” and staging several atonal music concerts to make a mockery of the proposal. The group successfully organized a peaceful recital outside the station, bringing food with them to encourage homeless people to come and feel included.

The group reported that Friedemann Kessler was also in attendance at the protest. By the time the concert finished, he apparently wanted to rescind his plans to play atonal music at the station, having been educated on its true origins by the performance.

While this particular plan is considered by many to be a hostile form of discouragement, it is not uncommon for transport hubs to employ music as a tool to calm or soothe passengers. Stations in Montreal and London have experimented with playing classical music, for instance, as it has been proven to quell antisocial behaviors. Other initiatives have involved changing the lighting in subway stations or experimenting with perfumes thought to engender feelings of positivity. It’s undoubtedly a more empathetic strategy to try and create positive feelings instead of negative ones, so it’s perhaps no wonder that the atonal music strategy was a non-starter, especially in a city as progressive as Berlin.

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How do you make a space that’s the size of an average bedroom accommodate an entire apartment? If there’s vertical space available, the answer is nearly always to build up, and that’s exactly what Berlin studio Spamroom did for this tiny apartment. The creation of a built-in central unit housing a kitchen, bathroom and mezzanine makes the 226-square-foot space feel surprisingly comfortable and functional.

Visually expanding the available space with white paint and pale pine finishes, the architects blended modern elements with pre-existing historic features in the early 1900s building within Berlin’s Moabit district. Previous renovations attempted to enclose private rooms within the apartment, resulting in a space that felt cramped. The architects gutted the room and restored the original parquet floor.

Now, a nearly-invisible narrow white staircase leads to a sleeping loft on top of the freestanding pine structure, leaving the rest of the room open for living space. A wardrobe at the base of the stairs matches the look of the central unit for a cohesive feel throughout the space.

The built-in room-within-a-room hides a bathroom and separates a kitchenette from the entrance hall. It’s also packed with storage space, eliminating the need for a lot of freestanding furniture items like dressers and bookcases. The result is clean and minimalist, devoid even of cabinet hardware, tricking the eye into believing the apartment is larger than it really is.

The post Managing Micro Spaces: Space-Saving Room in a Room first appeared on Dornob.

From rustic shacks to glassy light-filled modern homes, houseboats offer cozy and private accommodations enhanced by the gentle movement of the water. Occasionally, they can even be rented by the public to see what it’s like to live on the sea, in a harbor or on a lake. ‘Modern Houseboat’ in Berlin is one such vacation rental, a quiet and unique place to stay in one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan cities.

This rectangular, glass-fronted houseboat floats on Lake Rummelsburg, a small bay in the river Spree. It feels out of the way, yet provides views of the city lights and easy access to all Berlin has to offer. It features one double bedroom, with an additional bed in the living area to sleep up to two adults and two children.

The open-plan interior space also includes a kitchen and bathroom, full of clean simple lines in shades of white, gray and pale wood. Guests can look out all those windows at Berlin’s famous TV tower. Custom-made furniture ensures optimal function without clutter in this 645-square-foot space.

While summer is the best time to take advantage of the sun glimmering on the surface of the lake, winter has its benefits, too, especially with that modern fireplace to keep the boat cozy. “Often the water is frozen and covered in snow, it is a really peaceful and quite interesting atmosphere,” says owner Chris.

Via Wallpaper:

“Owner Chris Laugsch and architect Bertjan Diphoorn have managed to pack in an open kitchen, custom-made furniture, fireplace and natty Condesa chair into just 60 square metres. Watch the ducks paddle by or charter Stadbote’s retro speedboat ’El Tigre’ to zip to the Reichstag, the double-decker Oberbaumbrücke bridge by Otto Stahn or the numerous beach bars on the river Spree. The conceptual art gallery Sammlung Haubrok and hip restaurant Pauly Saal are within peddling distance if you take one of the Bella Ciao bikes available. Sleeps two adults and two children.”

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The post Factory Refab: Beautiful White, Steel & Brick Loft in Berlin first appeared on Dornob.

Some people saw this old industrial water pumping station as an eyesore, a giant architectural relic out of place and scale in its now-residential semi-urban surroundings near the middle of contemporary downtown Berlin. An artistic duo, however, saw it is a huge blank canvas on which to create a masterpiece of modern minimalism. It’s now their art studio, a remarkable space for creatives to work their magic.

For the price of a cheap condo in most other major European cities, Elmgreen & Dragset were able to purchase the property for under a million dollars – a steal considering the fine structural shape it is in and the incredibly vast interior space it contains. Just imagine, for instance, what a comparable space would cost in Paris, London or New York City.

Rather than overwork their new home, the buyers chose simple white paint for much of the interior and industrial materials and other surfaces to match the character of the structure. Much of the existing piping, lighting and other raw industrial fixture work was simply left as-is or coated with a layer or two of paint.

The finished work is simple, spacious and open – allowing room to grow as needed and never-ending options for using the owners’ own artworks as interior decoration. Already they have peeled off some pieces of the original building to reuse as fireplaces and bathtubs, and sectioned off essential support spaces like kitchens, bathrooms and guest bedrooms, but the bulk of their creative construction work is no doubt yet to come.

More info via Galerie

It took the artists a year to decide how to proceed and to pull together money for renovations, which were carried out with architects Nils Wenk and Jan Wiese. “We were willing to keep it more or less as it was,” says Dragset, “leaving the historical details intact.”

The light-filled big hall, with its nearly 45-foot ceiling, serves as the primary work space, adapted for each project based on how much is being made in the studio or, as with most of the artists’ work, by outside fabricators. “Sometimes we do tests that fill the entire space,” says Elmgreen. “For the Moynihan Train Hall installation, we did paper and wooden models here, including sections at full scale.”

Photos by Roman Marz for Galerie

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