Vision for the transformation of Eichbaum underground station between Mülheim and Essen into an opera house. A new type of opera will be created in an on-site opera site office in collaboration with specialists in composition, text and space in direct confrontation with the everyday conditions of the place. (premiere planned to take place in June 2009)

sleeping where you don´t want to be? in a cheap hotel? in the ikea funished guest appartment of the theatre? on the sofa of a friends friend? raumlaborberlin has designed their own mobile dream hotel for workshops, group exhibitions, symposions and festivals. now we are waiting for the perfect investor….

The idea behind the Houses of Literature for Children is to create places, with the only purpose to generate a contact between children and the written culture. This contact is meant to create a permanent link to literature and reading aswell as learning through reading, recognising and understanding.

Invited by Storefront for Art and Architecture the Spacebuster was developed and designed to explore the qualities and possibilities of public space in New York City. Spacebuster interacts with the architectural and the social space and its conditions. It opens urban space for temporary collective uses.

Design of a festival centre for the Steirischer Herbst Festival 2008 whose main theme is “Misfortuneavoidance Strategies”. The festival centre will be located in an empty baroque museum building. We’re interested in the idea of building an explosion; a shape and structure which develops a fascinating force at the exact moment of its dissolution. We will reduce the colours of the interior walls, floors and fixtures to a few grey tones so that only the shapes of the objects stand out.

Stick on city is a responsive drawing, made to be permanently renewed. It is a 12mx2,5m training ground for utopians. Built and unbuilt iconic architectural designs assembled in an imaginary landscape. Visitors can take a tour, then add their own vision by drawing in and simply sticking it into the city!

raumlabor_berlin is engaged with temporarily transforming locations: a gallery into a laboratory, a public square into a location for scientific discourse or a cold corridor into a place with new social qualities. When spaces are meant not only to be neutral shells for content but also to convey particular functions and serve as catalysts, the way of dealing with these spaces, their design and programming have to be integral components of the overall conception.

The “Fondation Suisse” is the most prominent dormitory of modern times. To mark the 75th anniversary in november 2008 raumlaborberlin was commissioned to find a temporary solution for a recurring problem: the missing space for big festivities. In summer the >piloti< called terrace underneath the building would have been perfect, but in november it was too cold. We proposed to wrap the space with an inflatable, translucent membrane and thereby transform the semi public ambient to semiprivate. For three days the pneumatic hall gave home to concerts, speeches, dinners, a conference and a party.

“The Hotel-Stadt directly developed into self-regulating, informal urban strategies generated through participation of and cooperation between artists and populace, outsiders and locals, top-down and bottom-up movements. Just like a high-rise favela […][“Hotel Neustadt”] was a city without a master plan, a new city within a fading context, a temporary city within permanence, a nomadic city within a settlement.” Kyong Park, from: “Moving cities, moving nations”, Hotel Neustadt p.120 et seq. Berlin 2004

Construction work is going on at “Wonders of the Prairie”. In the eyes of the public a boat is built from pieces of wood, junk, and offset-metals at the Alte Feuerwache. A sign points out that raumlabor-berlin is building a submarine which will be sent onto a „dangerous“ journey on the Neckar and Rhein to Ludwigshafen on Sept. 20. At its destination it will be handed over to the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen.We are looking for ten courageous persons who navigate the vessel on the difficult journey and for persons who want to participate in the building of the boat.

During our Warsaw visit we passed by several post socialist, in-between spaces that obviously have no formal purpose and which were often occupied by informal uses like markets and its economies. Not only those “waiting” spaces are occupied , even regular street space is used by people selling their goods on the sidewalks. In combination with the loss of “jarmark europa” as warsaw’s central informal trading site, a serious lack of space for these activities emerges. Our argument is, that the informal part of the cities economy is an important part of urban diversity and its user - interface. The informal markets generate an alternative way of establishing businesses, of individual careers and learning economic and social networks.

erschienen im Jovis Verlag
herausgegeben von raumlaborberlin, Julia Maier und dem Heidelberger Kunstverein
192 Seiten, 2-sprachig deutsch/englisch
20 x 27cm, broschiert, 28,00 €

An ideas workshop is working out a concept for an integrated urban development of Tempelhof considering the special situation in Berlin, recognizing urban pioneers as catalysts and initiators of urban activity and applying them as tools of site development. Site activation by urban pioneers and culural initiatives is linked with long-term urban development concepts from the start and is taken to mean an integrative component of the entire development process.

What meaning does the historical centre of a city carry and who has sovereignty over that meaning? Shortly before the demolition of Palast der Republik in Berlin, raumlaborberlin built a huge mountain formation in, on and in front of this controversial building. The mountain showed that even a rough concrete ruin can become home to people, their past and their dreams. Its size, grace and speed, along with the countless installations, performances and record numbers of visitors to it, caused a great storm within the political debate; a storm which unfortunately calmed all too quickly. However, this still remains one of the boldest projects on this list.

A large prison is located in a residential area in south Munich. Societal harmony and societal sanctioning face each other as parallel worlds. White Spots intervenes in this district with thirtythree cars of the same colour which fluctuate through the streets following a secret choreography.

The Kitchen Monument is a mobile sculpture which has two states of being. This zinc sheetclad sculpture can be extended into public space by a pneumatic spatial mantle that transforms it into a temporary collective space. Different programmes are staged in different places. Its broad spectrum of uses includes a banquet hall, conference room, cinema, concert hall, ballroom, dormitory, boxing arena and steam bath.

This project involved designing urban development strategies within the context of urban shrinkage. Essential aspects of the diversification process within this district were: to attract attention to smaller urban elements using the “Kolorado Plan”, to include residents in the development process and to initiate negotiation processes using developmental objectives and means.