Project: Open House for Dance and Music (Summer Semester 2010)

Berlin is full of gaps and breaks. They account for a good part of the city’s fascination and provide the space for a unique diversity in the city’s development. One of these gaps lies at the heart of a vibrant arts and culture scene in Prenzlauer Berg. It defies conventional solutions and offers the ideal setting for an open cultural center for dance and music.

The urban planning challenge of this design project is to create an imaginative and sensitive addition to the existing Gründerzeit urban structure: The narrow, elongated site for the open cultural center for dance and music is located within an open perimeter block. Resolving this situation requires a specialized architectural solution and a distinctive building typology.

The architectural challenge will be to develop a building with spaces for various purposes, to provide users with a variety of spatial options, and to give the architecture a meaningful and atmospheric expression. The spatial offerings should be geared toward the various stakeholders from the “neighborhood”: dancers and dance groups, cultural associations, young and older musicians, children, and others who could use the new spaces for events on a temporary or permanent basis.
Accordingly, the design program encompasses a wide variety of spaces: from a multipurpose hall to a café, from a chamber music hall to a rehearsal room, from a rooftop terrace to a furniture storage area.

Anna Kunz

Concept
The staircases are defining elements of the building. By offsetting the staircases, the floor areas shift further and further inward and become progressively narrower as they rise. The staggered levels create a stepped form that establishes a connection to the Prater. The facade envelops the floors and, with its height and rectangular shape, mirrors the adjacent building.

Stephanie Schimmel

Concept
The building utilizes the entire area of the lot, while maintaining full-width access to the beer garden in the inner courtyard. On both the street and courtyard sides, it echoes the building lines of the surrounding area. The building thus blends into the urban fabric, yet distinguishes itself from the adjacent residential development through its height.

The three large halls are distributed throughout the building and are clearly identifiable as such from the outside. The remaining functions are arranged around them at varying levels, so that the public space runs through the building as a continuous spatial continuum. This creates a loose, permeable structure with open spaces between the rooms that can be used flexibly and serve as meeting places that foster communication within the building.

The façade’s design echoes the horizontal lines of the neighboring buildings. Movable elements allow for varying lighting conditions and create a dynamic appearance on the building’s exterior envelope.
The load-bearing wall panels and the ends of the slabs are clad with prefabricated elements made of white exposed concrete. The narrow, horizontally arranged components are installed with minimal joint spacing to create as homogeneous a surface as possible.

Elisa Marx
Floor Plan Adjacent to the fire wall, ancillary rooms—such as restrooms, coat check areas, and storage rooms—are arranged along the entire length of the building. Next to them is the circulation area. It also runs linearly along the entire length of the building and is illuminated by a skylight, the foyers, and openings facing the street and the Prater Garden. Only the third floor has no openings facing the street or the Prater Garden. This is where the Black Box and the dance studios are located. Even before visitors enter these spaces, they should already sense their atmosphere from this level. Adjacent to the circulation corridor on the first two floors are the small rehearsal rooms, the administrative offices, and the music school. The large halls and rehearsal rooms are located on the floors above.

Movement Through the Building
The staircases of the Kulturhaus are arranged in a continuous line illuminated by a skylight. When visitors enter a level, they are always first greeted by a foyer with a view of the passageway or the Pratergarten. The foyers counteract the building’s linear circulation pattern, creating a sense of width and opening up the space. They can be used as gathering places before or after events or for smaller exhibitions.

Structural System The resulting loads are transferred through the lateral exterior walls and the interior walls that extend across all floors and define the circulation space. In addition, the interior walls between the event and rehearsal spaces stiffen the building, similar to a bulkhead construction.

Thomas Muhs

Concept
The “Boxes” design is based on the idea of adding a new fire wall to the existing one and then pulling them apart to form two parallel walls. In a subsequent step, the main-use rooms were pushed through the northern wall as “boxes.” The southern wall is intended to accommodate various ancillary uses. The resulting space between the two walls provides room for circulation. All rooms are oriented so that they have two glazed or partially glazed walls. One faces northeast toward the passageway to the Prater Beer Garden, and the other faces the interior of the building. Only the three large halls are to deviate from this rule, so that these rooms offer a line of sight along the passageway to the Prater Beer Garden. At this stage, I have divided the design into three areas. In this case, the south wall is thickened and houses the ancillary spaces, as well as the elevators and emergency stairwells. The middle section is the circulation area. The hallway is designed to be extra wide so that the grand staircases can also be accommodated within it. In addition, the boxes housing the main functions protrude from the northern wall into the hallway. The third and northern section comprises the main functions and the northern wall. In this section, the rooms designated for the main functions are arranged as boxes—or as shared boxes containing several smaller rooms—embedded within the wall. All rooms feature glass ends facing the hallway and the Prater. This is intended to create varying degrees of transparency depending on the time of day. The only exceptions to this basic principle are the three large halls. These cantilever out over the passageway to the Prater and extend over two stories. Furthermore, their open ends are rotated 90° relative to the other rooms. The functions themselves are also arranged thematically. The ground floor and first floor house general-use spaces such as a bistro, administrative offices, and a multipurpose hall. The following floors (2–4) are dedicated to music, and the fifth floor houses the dance area. The two basement levels also contain various ancillary spaces, as well as the underground parking garage.

Maya Reiner (Prof., Dipl.-Ing., M.Arch.)
Natalie Heger (Dr.-Ing.)
Sebastian Blecher (Dipl.-Ing.)