A complex challenge needs a complex strategy composed of 5 interweaved layers of discussion with the existing urban and social landscape: exploration, using, building, planning and space-making

The space station, as an extreme example of the utopian city and efficient habitable structures, is an integral part of the past century’s vision of the future. This future has arrived, and the dream of inhabited cities in outer space will remain unfulfilled for a long time to come.

Theater happens right now! A luminous mist of bubbles floating between the old bathhouse and the shaft tower of the former colliery Zeche Zollverein. On the one hand, it reminds of the cleaning process on the other of the transformation into a cultural location.

The endless city is the construction of an abstract body. The design of the pavilion attempt to re-insert an entity. Becoming a sign in the landscape, it announce the museum coming…

Eichbaumoper characterises the temporary transformation of the metro station Eichbaum into an opera house. ‚Eichbaum’ is a crosspoint and station located between the cities of Essen and Mülheim. Once considered as a place of aspiration and hope, the ‚Eichbaum’ is now shaped by vandalism, fear and foreboding. Premiere: 24th of 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.

Invited by the „GLOW“ festival, raumlabor designed together with plastique-fantastique in cooperation with Designhuis-Eindhoven, the „GLOW-Lounge“ festival centre. A light object out of 600 crates. Unique in the Netherlands, for the third successive time the center of Eindhoven is the stage and podium for „GLOW: Forum of Light in Art and Architecture“.

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.

To inform the public about Periferic 8 a temporary architectural structure - the Info Point - was built in front of “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University. The architectural structure functions as a meeting and info-point of Periferic 8 and as a public space for discussions and screenings. It is not only a functional structure but also a specific object that serves as a metaphor for a Utopian place highlighting the necessity of public spaces for the community and acting as a catalyst for social awareness.

For the “house of imagination” raumlabor berlin interlaces two architectural ideas of living in Torstrasse 166: A 1:1 modell of a Plattenbau flat type P2 which is living reality in Halle-Neustadt and many cities of the former GDR is built into a Gründerzeit flat. Both models date from a time of mass production of living space, the Gründerzeit as a market driven approach, the P2 flat as a government-controlled approach.

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.

An artificial lake landscape is emerging on the site of a former open cast mine in the south Lusatia area. The “Overland Boat” is a mobile lookout platform from which the construction of the canal that will connect the Senftenberg and Geierswald lakes can be observed by visitors and residents. The boat will be transferred to the most interesting parts of the canal’s construction while it is being built. It will be put into the water at a celebratory ceremony once the canal has been completed.

Medium-scale foyer furnishing: too big to be furniture and too small to be building structures. Consisting of abstract black, mobile elements reminiscent of facades, city models, fences and blocks, the foyer area can be infinitely redefined using the elements of this variable installation. Surface graphics by G.Lacombe, Paris

This communal roof terrace of the Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben, Berlin with a view of the River Spree was extended in the context of maintenance works carried out on it. Wooden boards recycled from the “Silver Pearl” were stacked into a compact yet soft form. The extension rises like an arena from the existing building, serving as both an edge guard and versatile seating.

Participative planning process to restructure the centre of the Buntekuh district; a signalcoloured citizen’s box will become a point of informational exchange and social encounter. The central square will gradually develop according to necessity and the means available.

This exhibition architecture for “Op-Art” in the Schirn gives spatial expression to the otherworldliness bought forth by many of the works here. The exhibition design separates this distinctive museum into a continual series of spaces—an atmospheric, delicate display for the Op-Art.

Conversion of a former boiler house into a hostel in the monument-protected “Pfefferberg” brewery complex. The transformations which the building has undergone throughout the history of its use are visible in the guest rooms. Unexpected elements borrowed from nature orchestrate the space between paved interior courtyards and urban wild garden.