{"id":19952,"date":"2014-09-15T21:01:53","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T19:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/atelier-katharina-grosse-2\/"},"modified":"2015-11-16T17:30:12","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T16:30:12","slug":"atelier-katharina-grosse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/atelier-katharina-grosse\/","title":{"rendered":"Atelier Katharina Grosse"},"content":{"rendered":"

The studio is located not far from Berlin\u2019s central train station, in a part of the city that has been characterized since the mid-nineteenth century by large complexes of urban infrastructure. These include the abandoned railroad grounds east of Lehrter Strasse and to the west of one of the largest former military parade grounds, with its associated barracks and other military buildings.
\nThe studio is located on the former site of a military tailor\u2019s works, built there in the 1890s. The company housing for the director was located on that lot. All that remains of that building, which was destroyed in the war, is the masonry of the exterior walls along Lehrter Strasse and Kruppstrasse, up to the upper cornice of the base, at a height of about two meters. This is protected as an architectural landmark and serves to enclose the lot. The plan for the space consists of two workrooms with skylights, a storeroom and archive, office spaces, a library with a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and several side rooms. They are all fit into a compact cube of 12.5 x 25 x 12.5 meters, with rooms for quite different uses directly connected to one another. The space is organized in such a way that there are no access and circulation areas apart from the entrance and two stairways.
\nThe rooms open up onto one another and form zones of distance and transition between them. Their qualities and meaning are determined by their positioning within the building\u2019s spatial structure and by their spatial and visual connections to the surrounding exterior spaces. Decisions regarding construction and the outer wall of the building were influenced by the neighboring Prussian barracks, with their simple details and intarsia of natural stone, and by the requirements for the surfaces of the workrooms. The walls are lined with drywall to provide work surfaces. The result is a reinforced-concrete structure with inside insulation and an exterior shell of rough-cut boards for the exposed surface. Ferroconcrete for the outer skin was our response to the specific statement of the Prussian brick buildings, which resulted from the combination of great mass and a delicate, fili-greed texture of the walls. We were looking for contemporary architectural approaches to achieve this same expression.<\/p>\n