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

read about our contribution to “people meet in architecture”, 12th architecture biennial in venice and find out, which current and upcoming exhibitions raumlabor is involved in.

The chaise bordelaise is a participative, educative, social sculpture with a private use for the „INSIDERS“exhibition in Arc en Reve / CAPC, Bodeaux.
09.10.2009 - 07.02.2010

an installation by raumlabor in collaborations with students from Bauhaus Universität Weimar in the bauhaus archiv / museum für gestaltung, berlin: a 1:2 replica of the canope of the “Haus der Elektroindustrie”, located on Alexanderplatz 1-5.
Exhibition: 27.08. - 29.08.09

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.

INTERCITY BERLIN-PRAHA is a long term dialogue between young artists of various disciplines from Praha and Berlin. The fifth edition is dedicated to architecture. The exhibition is a snapshot of the latest works of eight young architecture studios from each city.

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.

”We Are Coming!” will present a selection of their many projects divided into the categories ”Relational Fetish Objects”, ”Transformed Urbanity” and ”Urban Narratives”. They also speculate about the hidden futures of the fjord city in an interactive cooking performance and present the newest (and possibly most original) link between Oslo and Berlin; a submarine and a wall-to-wall pool of white water in the gallery.

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.

The System is a labyrinthine structure made of 223 doors from buildings that have been demolished in Halle-Neustadt. It opens up spaces to the visitors in unexpected ways, reflecting diverse aspects of our work.

A portrait of the steel magnate Lakshmi N. Mittal, the new owner of the former local steelworks “Lehnin-Steelworks”, is painted onto a wall hanging from a photo found on the internet. Location: on the Aleja Solidarnosc, the main street that connects the central square to the steelworks, the socalled “Axis of Labour”.

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.

A one-week workshop in the French pavilion of the Architecture Biennale; this is an exhibition garden in which a biennale takes place early each autumn. It remains empty the rest of the year; totally empty? No, it’s full of leftovers from past exhibitions, enough to build a house and all its comfort. Everything can be had for free in the Giardini: materials, furniture, water, electricity. The “Treasure Map” shows this hidden potential, where it is to be found and how it can be accessed.

An imaginary raumlabor world in a Plexiglas box

This was an exhibition project in a former border lookout tower at Schlesisches Busch. We transferred our office into the lookout tower for the two months of the simulation game “Living in a tower”. Visitors to the exhibition were the clients; real-time design and model-making were used to discuss their needs in relation to living in the environment of this former lookout tower, against the background of its turbulent history.

Wolfsburg in the year 2036; the Volkswagen works have moved to Romania. Large parts of the city have been abandoned. A globally operating property developer has taken over the city and has started a large-scale advertising campaign. Using so-called transformers, the city is converted into a noble suburb.

Having set up the building at the start of the exhibition, the team got to work. In five thematic groups, the members of raumlabor began to design a house from the inside out. Beginning with the furniture, they worked through a process of negotiation towards the complexity of a collectively designed house.