LIVING & WORK BALANCE LOTTUM
Apartment atelier and garden in the Lottumstrasse, Berlin
The project is the creation of a live/work unit within an old paper factory building off the Lottum Strasse in Berlin. Located at the foot of the Prenzlauer Berg - not yet on the hill, but at its beginning, where Mitte and Prenzlauerberg meet, Lottum Strasse is short - running from Schoenhauser Alle to Choriner Strasse, it crosses only Christinenstrasse - and wide - cars can be parked perpendicular to the direction of traffic, an indication that the street as it was originally designed could accommodate a street-life with more than just cars. The buildings that line Lottum Strasse posses a quiet majesty, where the vast size and assuredness of 19th c. Berlin are clearly legible. As a slope within the city topography Prenzlauer Berg is quite gentle, and in the bisecting street of the Lottum Strasse, the Christinenstrasse, and the Choriner Strasse at it’s western end is the slope suddenly, almost uncomfortably steep, where it makes a two story change in level, up to the Fehrbelliner Strasse. In the middle of this city block the change in level becomes a large step; a brick retaining wall, two stories high constructed from bricks stacked each one slightly behind the next, giving the wall a slight but important cant upwards. The wall has a particularly identifiable character within the block as it clearly does not belong to the architecture of the buildings, but rather has the scale of the infrastructure of the city; a part of the basic topological modifications necessary to enable the city’s development and use. The retaining wall attracts its own particular ecology of plants and bird life on the small brick steps, and has a strong visual, tactile, and acoustic presence within the block. Within the block’s perimeter the retaining wall serves the function of creating a useful series flat planes used as gardens on a number of levels, and significantly a large site on which a paper factory was built. This paper factory, which was up until two years ago used as an Art School, has been renovated into apartments and workplaces. One discovers the building upon passing through an archway of the building off Lottum Strasse – it is a steel, brick, and concrete structure over 4 floors + penthouse and basement, its floors are concrete slabs set into steel beams, supported on brick columns with large windows set into the brick piers. Between the retaining wall and the paper factory building there is a large garden. The particular qualities of the brick retaining wall and the paper factory have been carefully studied and amplified in this project for a live/work unit. Located in the east half of the building, the live/work unit is composed of an office of 120m2 on the ground floor, an apartment of 136m2 on the first floor, and a garden at the foot of the retaining wall. On both floors the primary concern was maximizing the spatial connectivity within the existing city block/building fabric - inside to outside, garden to street, live to work. The fabric of the existing building has been carefully preserved and exposed - its’ steel beams, oak windows, marble floor, brick columns, also its thermal mass, natural light and ventilation. Living area, working area, sleeping area, eating area, bathing areas, are in a spatial continuum, carefully separated through materials and colors relating to climatic, visual, aural, and haptic qualities, with minimal use of doors or partitions.
The built-in furniture elements such as storage units, kitchen units, wash basins, become part of the continuity of space making and material strategy, using natural materials in their natural color and finish, incorporating lighting and working with the scale of ‘oversized’ elements such as cupboards and doors that become spatial elements. Hard and soft, textured and smooth, colored and white surfaces on walls and floors denote zones of work, rest and reflection. Brighter colors are incorporated into the kitchen presses on both floors, work-tops are in stone.
The furniture in the office is entirely bespoke; tables are made as thin as possible from aluminium foam sandwich panels with linoleum surfaces and beech edge trims, supported on aluminium legs. All power, networking points are supplied from a suspended shelf/display and lighting system which frees the marble floor of cables. Translucent display panes with integrated magnetic strips are suspended from the ceiling. A pneumatic door hides the fax and printing equipment within a large timber box propped on two stainless steel legs. The workplace on the ground floor and the living-place on the first floor are discretely connected with a stair hidden behind a sliding timber door. In the garden large steps have been created, large cortin-steel trays are filled with small paving stones typical to streets in Berlin. Between the large steps and a recycled brick terrace are planted birch trees in a field of ferns, while tall grasses are planted in the thin zone between the steps and the retaining wall.
