Site Specific: Framework Apartment
Plattenbaustudio - Berlin, 2019
Hybrid plan, elevation and axonometric drawing.
PB Between September 2018 and May 2019 we renovated an old apartment in Berlin, transforming it to match the needs of its new users, tenants of the co-housing organisation Happy Pigeons Co-living. The apartment now consists of four large bedrooms in orbit around shared domestic facilities.
Existing Condition
1:20 Scale model.
Existing Condition (Image © Happy Pigeons)
Colour palette.
Half-finished partitions form extended thresholds between bedrooms and the shared spaces. Plywood platforms create flexible storage units to house books, clothes, to provide seating and opportunities to display and inhabit.
Colour is used throughout to highlight particular, important moments within the apartment. It defines a person’s private space, emphasises a new intervention and sometimes calls up an old detail, leftover from previous occupants. Missing tiles in the old kitchen floor are celebrated, or at least accentuated, while vignettes of old paint, plaster and wallpaper make appearances on the bedroom walls.
Off-site joinery manufacture.
During construction.
Bedroom with framework parttion and plywood furniture.
Bedroom with framework parttion and plywood furniture.
Bedroom with framework parttion and plywood furniture.
The new kitchen is organised around an asymmetrical, red dining table, emphasising its importance as the centre of this home. On weekends and holidays, the table can be moved into the middle of the room to provide extra space for parties and celebrations.
Hallway.
View into Kitchen.
Kitchen.
NOTES
Many thanks to Jonathan Janssens and Jennifer O’Donnell at Plattenbaustudio for their help in compiling this post.
Images © Plattenbaustudio.
Published on 29th January 2021.