An extension of the living space with flowing rooms, the idea of wall panels as a formative element is the starting point of the design. Eight walls serve as a supporting structure, but also continue inside as room-forming elements. In a small space, different spatial situations are created with simple means.
Three spaces made legible, which are connected in an open relationship to each other and to the garden. The roof is encircling the eight wall panels.

private commission, 2017-2020, Berlin, DE
all photos by Simon Menges
FAKT

The two-story rooftop extension in Berlin searches for a volumetric integration to embed it into the neighboring roof landscape while still formulating an autonomous answer. The modular roof typology works with the given partitions of the existing house. The position of each shifting module is defining both the interior and exterior spaces at once.
As a roof addition to the 5-story house from the 1960s, the project structurally deals with specific requirements to be realized within the existing load bearing structure. A light-weight timber construction was developed for all eight modules, working with mainly prefabricated elements.

private commission, 2016-2021, Berlin, DE
exterior photos by Fabian Pfitzinger
interior photos by FAKT
FAKT

A sloping, walk-on level is the space-forming element of the intervention in the BDA Gallery Berlin. The platform is placed at a subtle slope of five percent in the gallery’s public spaces and extends from the street-side show window to the smaller courtyard window. The three existing spatial zones – previously separated by steps – are unified as one space, creating new possibilities in use and interpretation. Perspective and scale, interior and exterior space, private and public spaces are redefined.
At the same time, two extremely different spatial states arise: a dematerialized space bordered by homogeneous white areas above the oblique plane and a constructive lower space.
Moving through the new gallery shifts balance and dimensions, space gains in complexity and evokes new ways of perception. The perspective changes, street becomes a stage and vice versa. In the back of the gallery, a circular cutout with a diameter of about two and a half meters defines a place for discourse and debates.

direct commission, photos by Fabian Pfitzinger + FAKT
exhibition Title: Ich Bin Raum, curated by Anca Timofticiuc.
built Installation, 2019 Berlin, DE
FAKT

The existing apartment gets reconfigured into a system of ceiling beams that act partly structurally and partly functionally.
This operation allows for a free movement along the facade and results in a placement of usage zones centered towards the middle of the apartment. On both ends of the apartment sits one generous space, all connected with the option of a loop-like transition through those spaces.

private commission, built, 2018-2019 Berlin, DE
photos by Fabian Pfitzinger + FAKT
FAKT

The spatial concept interprets the ‘Haus der Kulturen der Welt’ (Hugh Stubbins) as a pillar and stages. In particular the imaginary spaces around the pillars as well as the pillars themselves are defined as a space of action for 18 invited artists. The adjusted body, multi- layer membranes of corrugated plastic are to be read as negative spaces. The defined elliptical spaces are created around the columns. The spaces are perceived individually as well as in relation to each other or as an open field.

competition, photos by Simon Menges + FAKT
built Installation, 2018 Berlin, DE
FAKT

For this project a house was to be designed on a small plot in second row. This plot was bought by the client to combine it with the plot next to it, which they already possessed. Through this special situation many different actors came into play: the Berlin building code, neighbors, the right to use a plot nearby for piping and passage, a garage and a wall that could not be demolished and more. Standard solutions would not work here, this context required an architecture that perfectly responds to these legal and spacial challenges. The solution was, to design a new typology: two intertwined units, partly hovering above the property line and the existing garage. Both units are of equal quality and act as small houses in this semi-urban neighborhood. They have a garage and an open kitchen with access to a small garden in the ground floor and a bright big open space with lots of light in the upper floor. Each unit gets light from every direction and the upper floor can be divided into smaller rooms if necessary.

private commission, 2017
Berlin, DE
FAKT

The Climate Tower as a life-cycle – a precise mapping of all existing heat losses is initial to the project and the beginning of a vertical garden. The careful analysis of all the heat emissions of the tower leads to an understanding of the very particular all-season microclimate that allows for a fascinating colorful world of exotic plants. The surrounding ramp articulates an eventful path to the top of the tower which stands in itself for the energy revolution and brings energy cycles to life – becoming a symbol for renewable energies. The climate tower of Heidelberg embodies an inseparable conjunction of nature, technology, and surrounding landscape. By this it stands for a renewed understanding of our relation to nature and high technology – a visible icon of a responsible but inventive usage of our resources.Honorable Mention / Anerkennung, 2016
Realisierungswettbewerb Energie- und Zukunftsspeicher Heidelberg, DE
FAKT + Lohrengel Landschaft

The proposal for the Branderhof Areal in Aachen (DE) formulates an envisioned scenario of how to live in a future neighborhood. It responds to the two-fold requirements of the municipality of Aachen on one hand and the joined forces of Verein and Baugruppen of Branderhof on the other. The site of 1,3-hectare which includes the protected landmarks of Branderhof calls for a holistic approach to develop a visionary neighborhood.The project was accompanied by a continuous research for the suburban accumulation of privatized landscape dreams and miniature worlds. Aiming to incorporate this wish for individuality into an urban model that is more open and which offers diversity, spaces of social negotiation and community. Starting point for the project was the typological iteration to free the ground level of privatized areas by moving them into the houses. Thus, the ground floor becomes the basis for a lively and active neighborhood that is dense and diverse in uses, but open in atmosphere and movement. This idea translates into a porous spatial grid that is able to host both living and intimate green spaces, with a gradient from private (apartment and garden) to semi-private and finally Branderhof with its surrounding district.open competition, 2016
DE, NL, BEL
FAKT

A rhizome-like structure and social model serve as the starting point of the building. The image of the rhizome stands for an interconnected Rosa Luxemburg Foundation which promotes exchange and communication – a house as a spatial network . The structure is offering five different spatial organizations of floor plans allowing for different uses: team work to individual work or mixed, a system with low hierarchy where different space types offer diverse working conditions and are adaptable in terms of structural flexibility. The architectural expression of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation corresponds with its structure and serves as the built symbol of the foundation.

open competition, 2015
Berlin, DE
FAKT

The new M20 museum works with the as found landscape of the Kulturforum and transforms it subtly. A common and bright roof defines the below as an open forum and spans the large space. While the relation of the preserved soft topography to the geometrically precise roof enhances the awareness for the slight ground movements and translates them into a poetic space. The museum creates two levels with two very different spatial situations (monospace and cabinet) and with this derives a tense experience of different scales within the museum.
The concepts and alleged antagonists of Scharoun’s Stadtlandschaft vs Mies‘ modernist ideal type of the New National Gallery are included and interpreted in the project in their tense relationship. Strategically, the current situation is not ignored but recorded truthfully. It is accepted and further supplemented into the desired spatial qualities. By maintaining the topography of the ground, an inner landscape is created and provides the various required room heights of the program. From this parameter, the arrangement and the roof openings are deduced by the varying static moment of the buckling length of the supports.
The spatial identity of the terrain / landscaped floor and the floor of the exhibition are mutually interdependent. Visual and spatial connections of the two floors via the atria make the museum perceived only within its context and as a common experiential space.

open competition, 2015
Berlin, DE
FAKT

The Altona district school is understood as a new model of a vertical urban school. It forms the center of the district and acts as an inclusive school, connecting both scholar activities and life of the students. It adheres to the master plan, interprets its qualities and conducts them architecturally. Pedagogical spaces require no artificial learning world, but rather the updating and consolidation of the qualities of a heterogeneous urban structure. Public, semi-public and private spaces provide the students and teachers with choices of how and when.
The vertical school is experienced as one coherent space. An interior sequence of rooms runs through the building and all the stories are linked to allow the conjuring of the overall space, which still offers niches and separated rooms that are organized towards the outer facade. The primary structure is designed as a robust and economical reinforced concrete construction. The school is sustainable in the sense of its openness for adaptations and changes of learning concepts or spatial needs over time. In this way the school consciously refers to large-scale typologies or office buildings in its static structure and abstracts the qualities of these types in structural robustness, openness and flexibility.
The specific architecture develops the model of a vertical school house where levels and perforations create a deep inside world assembling and connecting all communal spaces. An intersection of structure and program – creating an integrative and communicative school as well as new synergies and possibilities of learning in an all inclusive school.

selected competition, 2015
Schule Neue Mitte Altona, Hamburg, DE
FAKT

The concept for the Helios school is less associated with a building structure but with a city in which the range from public to private spaces co-exist and provide students and teachers with multi-faceted choices. The school acts as image and partaker in a heterogeneous community within the city. The ground floor is structurally different from the spaces above and acts as the permeable zone that negotiates between outside and the inside of the school whilst also hosting the most public functions of the school.
While the school’s external appearance plays with the clear image of different cubes and transparency of the facade, the interior is recognized as a spatial structure defined by clear rules of large rooms which can be combined into enfilade sequences of many rooms. The individual learning spaces are formed as independent rooms and can be extended to the auditorium. All generous „learning landscapes“ have an equivalent outdoor space as an open and partly pergola-like courtyard.

4th prize, selected competition, 2015
Wettbewerb Grund- und Gesamtschule Helios Köln, DE
FAKT + Ludloff und Ludloff Architekten

The Bauhaus Museum is a showcase in itself and within the city. As an open museum, it represents the everyday culture of the Bauhaus and displays the Bauhaus Foundation’s collection openly. The house locates itself boldly and communicatively in the city as well as in the network of Bauhaus buildings in Dessau. While the structure is understood as a serving infrastructure filled with objects and exhibits, the museum becomes an icon of all its programs and presents them to the outside world simultaneously.
As a visitor, a vertical experience of the city becomes possible parallell to the collection round. There are views at varying heights starting from the ground plaza, then looking at the park along with the City Hall (Ratsgasse); the counterpart of the historical post, as it glances into the expanse of the city and all the way up to the sculpture garden on the roof, in height of the tree tops.
The individual floors are located dependently to their neighboring floors and produce a variety of spatial situations. The offset and stacking of four display tubes creates an interplay of open and closed spaces. Consequently, the dialectic of these open and closed forms creates a spatial experience and expands the curatorial possibilities of this museum vastly. The interstices allow a fascinating interweaving with the city, visual connections of the active interior with exterior, and an engagement with the public spaces.

2nd round, open competition, 2015
Dessau, DE
FAKT + Vogt Landschaft

The construction of a new terrace on the hall of YAAM creates a new community space along the Spree river where different users from all cultures meet. It offers sport, play and leisure – a playground of diversity. The decision to treat the entire roof area as one flexible space is both economical and corresponding to the principle of YAAM; striving to express openness to further development and autonomous transformation. The design is expressed with a transparent and bright envelope similar to sporting uses, however, the common material is charged by means of design to a symbolic and independent aesthetic. The new roof equips YAAM with a new presence amongst the various actors along the river.
An overall economic approach is taken into account from materials to structural integrity. By using the existing concrete structure and a new beam grillage, all the loads can be directly deducted. An economical, simple and open spatial experience is achieved that encourages users to adapt and adventure the new space.

direct commission, 2015
Berlin, DE
FAKT

FAKT 034 is an installation piece realized in June 2015 in the courtyard of 6 Rue des Trésorier de la Bourse, Montpellier, in the context of the Festival des Architectures Vives. The project works as a progressive experiment both spatially and structurally. Its aluminum structure has a clear span of 6.4m x 4.5m with only two sheets of 2mm thickness each. The project searches for an installation that overcomes the object but instead transcends into phenomenon – the cloudscape. It is an attempt to enrich the structural nature of architecture with a strong sense of physical excitement and ever-changing visual properties. The topics of lightness, weightlessness and soft borders are all translated into one floating world.

open competition, 2015, all photos by Giulio Boem
Montpellier, FR
FAKT

Situated in an early 20th century building, the apartment was restructured to change the typical floor plan issues of the “Berliner Zimmer” into a light and open space. A series of walls was demolished and the bathroom and kitchen were relocated with a central box. This reorganizes the different surrounding programs such as the entry, cooking, dining and living in an open space that profits from the maximum light available from the inner courtyard. Existing surfaces and materials were reworked and complemented by the new built-in unit.

private commission, 2015, all photos by Simon Menges
Berlin, DE
FAKT + Jan Rösler

The school project is articulated as a simple form that maintains a nuanced relationship with the surrounding countryside of Vaulruz. Compact and slightly rectangular, the school develops on three levels. Two complimentary movements define the circulation in the building: one centrifugal space separating and distributing the classes, and the other connecting them alongside the four facades. The plan conciliates the project by integrating the parts that are at the same time independent and spatially connected.

The project results from a search for clarity concerning various architectural aspects: scale, plan, structure, typology, relationship between interior and exterior spaces. The building develops unique situations and yet is united by the presence of a coherent structure that confers the identity of this school.

open competition, 2014
Vaulruz, CH
FAKT

The project is organized as one field. Freestanding buildings of varying height and depth alternate with open spaces of diverse nature and character. The urban structure aligns with the street, giving the neighborhood an address while positioning the new facilities within a larger chain of public programs. The structure is topological, in the sense that it defines spatial relationships that don’t exclusively depend on finite form. While it relates /adapts /adjusts to its surroundings, it is also clearly legible as one field /ground /park. Existing qualities found on site (i.e. the multiple, introverted micro-situations within the park of the Schöpflin Foundation) are not simply mirrored in the new neighborhood. They find a new and playful interpretation within a domestic environment.

The proposed masterplan for Schöpflin Areal in Lörrach (DE) formulates an integrative and adaptive answer to the respective demands of two actors – the municipality of Lörrach and the Schöpflin Foundation – joining efforts to develop a two-hectare site next to a former textile factory. Which forms of living – derived from the site’s existing qualities – could support the foundation’s philanthropic activities? How to integrate new public facilities (a municipal sports/ association center, new spaces for the foundation’s activities) within the neighborhood as potential new incubators for this suburban area? The proposal takes on these demands into a flexible yet robust system. More than a finished project, it is thought of as a framework open for future adaptations capable of supporting an uncertain development process. The open program is answered with an inclusive image and structure.

In this sequence of built and unbuilt, solid and void, housing and green, intensity doesn’t rely on one condition or the other, but rather in the mutual reinforcement of each of these counterparts. The presence of nature is fundamental. It is of diverse character (lawn, playground, vegetable garden, greenhouse, hollowed out surface, etc.) which supports extensive uses, social interactions and contributes to a specific urban landscape. As much as architecture, the presence of nature participates in the urban identity – an ever changing one, supporting numerous possibilities of living in the new Schöpflin neighborhood.

Honorable Mention / Anerkennung, Nicht-offener Wettbewerb, 2014
Schöpflin-Areal, Lörrach, DE
FAKT + David Levain

The new primary school of Riethüsli incorporates all school activities as an urban and compact typology which embodies learning and everyday life under a single roof. The former dispersed urban configuration is solved with a solitary setting. The school functions as a multi-disciplinary and hybrid building which combines learning, moving, playing, romping, lingering, talking and eating in one house with a garden that offers play areas and open spaces, paths and natural areas. The school house with its school program and various neighborhood uses in the afternoon becomes a new hub to the surrounding district.
The house is compact and vertically stacked. Instead of isolation, the project promotes communication through an intersection of programs over the floors. Just as learning requires different perspectives, a flexible variety of different spaces is offered in terms of size, openness, equipment and use.
The school creates a remarkable urban address on Teufener Straße, where passers-by can observe the different uses of the school over the day. The school’s sports centre is clearly oriented towards the public entrance on the street, where a prominent stairway leads users and pedestrians to the school. On the garden side, it is more calm and the connection of the school and the large garden is clearly felt. The open ground floor acts as a distributor mediating between the other levels and is linked to the garden.
At two crucial levels, the surroundings are brought into the public areas of the school house, to ensure its permeability with the context . Through its position and orientation on the slope, the building makes use of the existing topography and sensibly links the school on its different programmatic levels with the surrounding district.

5th prize, open competition, 2013
Ersatzneubau der Primarschule Riethüsli, St. Gallen, CH
FAKT