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Fashion brand Balenciaga has opened its first retail location in Berlin, which continues the brand’s Raw Architecture aesthetic and boasts monolithic concrete slabs and distressed surfaces. More
Architecture studio OMA has revealed images of the first completed part of its renovation of Berlin department store KaDeWe, a retail and event space connected by wood-clad escalators. More
German architect Philipp von Matt has incorporated a skylit studio and a ground floor exhibition space into this artist’s home in Berlin. More
Local studio Batek Architekten has refurbished the historic Blauer Stern cinema in Berlin using neon lights that reference the original mouldings in its foyer. More
The layout of this craft bakery in Berlin, designed by Danish architects Mathias Mentze and Alexander Vedel Ottenstein, revolves around an open kitchen that showcases the beauty of the bread-making process.Located in the courtyard of a restored brick factory in the city’s Scheunenviertel quarter, Sofi is a craft bakery that makes bread and cakes using grains sourced from small, organic farmers in Northern Europe.
Above: Sofi is housed in a former brick factory. Top image: A long, communal table offers space to eat
The project is a collaboration between Danish chef and restaurateur Frederik Bille Brahe and Design Hotels founder Claus Sendlinger.
As well as making baked goods using organic ingredients and low-intervention techniques, the owners’ ambition is for Sofi to serve as a community hub and to supply fresh bread to a selection of local restaurants.
A 3.5-metre-tall bread shelf separates the bakery from the guest area
Its interior was designed by Mentze and Vedel Ottenstein in collaboration with Augsburg-based interior design studio Dreimeta.
“We were introduced to the project last summer when Frederik Bille Brahe approached us about a new bakery he was working on in Berlin,” Vedel Ottenstein told Dezeen.
“Like Frederik, we are based in Copenhagen and have frequented his existing cafes and restaurants. So he brought us on to ensure that there would be a distinct Copenhagen feel to his first endeavour outside of Denmark.”
A corner bench is made from solid elm
“When we first visited the site in July 2020, the former tenant — which was a famous bagel shop — had just vacated the space. From the beginning, it was quite easy to imagine that this could be an amazing project, as the space itself has a lot of nice qualities,” he recalled.
“The double-height ceiling as well as the connection to the inner courtyard bring both light and a certain curiosity to the location. The space needed a lot of work but we felt the assignment was more to bring forth existing qualities instead of inventing new ones.”
All furniture was custom-made for the interior
The new floor plan revolves around an open-plan kitchen that sits at the centre of the space. Conceived as a “production floor”, this allows guests to watch Sofi’s small, international team of young bakers rolling out dough and working the ovens.
“Making bread is a highly technical skillset with all these different steps and we wanted this process to be the generator of the plan layout,” said Vedel Ottenstein.
Six bakeries and sweets shops with delectable interiors
“A bakery has a very clear narrative in which the oven is the heart of the place and so we wanted to place the oven in the exact middle of the space,” he continued.
“It’s like a choreography and we wanted to showcase the beauty of the process to all of the customers – from mixing the flour and water all the way to stocking up the bread shelf with freshly baked goods.”
The shelves display a range of the team’s favourite products
A red vinyl floor and walls painted in a delicate yellow hue are intended to reflect the colours of the bricks in the courtyard outside.
Peg coat racks and shelves wrap the walls while a 3.5-metre-tall bread shelf and long communal table fill up the centre of the space.
The stools were made by Rammelisten
All are made from solid elm with walnut detailing, with larger pieces such as the counter, bread rack, work table and shelves fabricated by a German carpentry firm. Smaller, movable items including the stools and benches were crafted by Rammelisten, a small woodwork studio based just north of Copenhagen.
“This was so that we could be more hands-on, follow the production and do alterations to the designs if we discovered issues,” explained Vedel Ottenstein.
Atelier Vime’s wicker lamp was decorated with a flower display by Danh Vo
The huge wicker pendant lamp that hangs over the communal table was handmade by French studio Atelier Vime and has been decorated with a flower display by local artist Danh Vo.
“The flower arrangement installed inside the shade is made from bast and hops flowers as a nod to the leftover waste from beer production that Frederik intends to use in the bread-making at Sofi,” explained Vedel Ottenstein.
Pinocchio is a tiny bakery in Japan decorated in the colours of bread
“The installation is a seasonal piece, where Danh Vo will bring in new flowers and plants according to the season from his farm north of Berlin, called Güldenhof,” he continued.
“He wishes to challenge the typical idea of a flower arrangement by using unexpected plants and weeds such as flowering leeks and lettuces.”
The bakery’s colourful glazed tableware comes from Studio X
A tall, open shelving unit separating the bakery and guest area displays a range of the team’s favourite products — including ceramics, coffee, tea, natural wines and flour from the Danish Kørnby mill.
Colourful glazed tableware by London’s Studio X, hand-crafted cups by Danish artist Kasper Hesselbjerg and vintage cutlery were all carefully selected by the design team and owners.
Sofi is not the first warm-hued bakery to feature on Dezeen. Design studio I IN decorated this tiny bakery in Japan in the colours of bread, while US studio The New Design Project outfitted a West Village cookie shop with speckled terrazzo, beige tiles and creamy walls to reference the baked goods for sale.
Photography is by Volker Conradus.
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Studio Aisslinger has created an adaptable workplace for accessories brand LOQI, featuring coloured curtains, folding screens and “work capsules”.Located in Berlin, the LOQI Activity Office serves as the European headquarters for the American company, which specialises in totes and weekend bags produced in collaboration with artists.
The office contains a mix of different work zones
The workspace is designed to support creativity and collaboration, but also to create a safe and supportive environment for staff in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.
To satisfy both of these conflicting requirements, Studio Aisslinger planned the space as a series of distinct but flexible zones, facilitating solo work, group workshops and a range of activities in between.
Contrasting colours help to signal different areas
“The workspace is treated like living, breathing organisms that adapt to accommodate a team deciding on flexibility, autonomy and the ability to choose when and how they work,” explained the studio, which is led by designer Werner Aisslinger.
“The result is an office space of a different kind – a lively and inspiring working landscape, breaking through the grey schematism of standardised workstation units.”
Folding metal screens are used as partitions
The office comprises a large open-plan space, so the design team had to find creative ways to demarcate different areas.
Partitions were designed to be as adaptable as possible, in the form of heavy fabric curtains and perforated metal screens. A bold colour scheme was also applied, so it’s clear where one area ends and another begins.
Studio Aisslinger’s Work Capsules provide spaces of solitude
Isolated workspaces are provided by Studio Aisslinger’s Work Capsules – a design previously created for the 25Hours Hotels.
With felt-covered exteriors and a bubble window, these pods allow occupants to find privacy and separation, without being completely cut off from the more public activities going on around them.
Meeting areas are framed by curtains, so they can be opened or closed
There are various other types of workspace on offer, including large desks with integrated lighting fixtures, a pink tiled bar, standing desks, bleacher-style seating areas and sofa booths.
Meeting areas are dotted through the centre of the space, framed by curving curtain rails. These spaces feature fluffy carpets, which not only give them a different aesthetic but also help to create acoustic baffling.
These spaces are all furnished with Studio Aisslinger designs, including the Aspen pendant lights for B.lux and the Circle Barstools.
A change in floor surface gives meeting areas a different feel
LOQI is one of many companies that have had to think more carefully about how they plan their offices, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Meditation chambers by Office Of Things wash workers in colourful light
The virus appears to have accelerated trends for partitioned spaces and mobile pods, with examples including a converted warehouse in Melbourne and a series of meditation chambers in YouTube and Google offices.
Fabric panels line the walls, to improve acoustics
With this design, Studio Aisslinger highlights the need for flexibility in the workplace, allowing people to find solitude when they need it, but to also bring people together.
They studio describes the project as “a complex, constantly changing conglomerate of working areas, break-off units and work capsules”.
The aim was to create an environment that people are proud to call their workplace, and perhaps even share on their social media platforms.
Staff can choose to work seated or standing
“New offices being planned for the near future will less emphasise communal co-working areas but nevertheless we all need new spaces for interaction or idea generation and collaboration,” added the design team.
“Flexible and open, the room adapts to its respective needs, creating space for playful creativity, for that dance of mind and body that is needed to gain new ideas.”
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Architecture studio Gonzalez Haase AAS used aluminium and translucent sheets of polycarbonate to create the few fixtures and furnishings that appear inside this sparse Berlin office.The office belongs to trendy communications agency BAM and has been designed by Gonzalez Haase AAS as a celebration of “raw materiality and geometric simplicity”.
“The raw, minimalistic aesthetic serves as a blank canvas for the agency’s creative projects,” the studio explained.
Measuring 270 square metres, the office takes over the ground and first floor of a building at the heart of the German capital.
The spacious lower level has been left open so that the agency can use it for large-scale meetings, or transform into a showroom or gallery-style space for events.
It’s only interrupted by a floor-to-ceiling sliding partition that can be pulled across to divide the space into two separate rooms when necessary.
The partition is crafted from four sheets of polycarbonate and has intentionally been positioned to sit slightly diagonally to contrast the sharp right angles that appear elsewhere throughout the space.
A white flight of stairs with a wire-frame balustrade leads up to the office proper.
Raw aluminium has been used to craft a series of blocky furnishings at this level, most notably a 22.5-metre-long shelf that extends from one side of the room to the other.
The shelf incorporates several open and closed storage cupboards, and a bench seat where staff can sit to eat their lunch.
Aluminium has additionally been used to make the long central work desk and the cabinetry in the small kitchenette.
Another angled polycarbonate partition appears at this level, but in this instance separates a boardroom.
“These monumental [aluminium] elements find balance in the large, translucent walls of polycarbonate sheeting,” added the studio.
Berlin’s Brutalist Silence office has barely anything inside
Further textual interest is created by the chipped wood and wool acoustic panels that have been staggered across the ceiling. They’re inset with simple strip lights that illuminate work areas below.
Gonzalez Haase AAS was established in 1999 by Pierre Jorge Gonzalez and Judith Haase.
The studio often applies a pared-back aesthetic to its projects – last year it completed Tem-plate, a fashion concept store in Lisbon that has been simply finished with white walls, concrete floors and display fixtures clad in crinkled silver metal.
As well as BAM’s office, other minimal workspaces in Berlin include Brutalist Silence, an office designed by Annabell Kutucu that features exclusively concrete surfaces and only a handful of furniture.
Photography is by Thomas Meyer.
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Red-stained cabinets crafted from MDF surround the open kitchen of restaurant Remi in Berlin designed by local studio Ester Bruzkus Architekten.Remi is situated near Berlin’s Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz square and is led up by Dutch chefs Lode van Zuylen and Stijn Remi.
This is the second restaurant that the pair have in the German capital, joining Lode & Stijn which opened its doors in 2016.
As with their inaugural restaurant, the chefs were keen for Remi to have a pared-back aesthetic – but also wanted the space to be reminiscent of the dining spots they once frequented at home in the Netherlands.
“For Remi, we were inspired by the grand cafes of our home, where we used to enjoy eating together,” Zuylen and Remi explained.
“We wanted to create a place where you could meet easily, whether for reading the newspaper, a quick lunch, or an intimate dinner.”
Local studio Ester Bruzkus Architekten was brought on board to develop the interiors of Remi, which takes over the ground floor unit of a new concrete and glass office building.
The restaurant is anchored by an open kitchen, enclosed by a series of MDF cabinets that have been stained a deep cherry red hue.
A handful of surfaces in the kitchen have been covered in rough grey stucco, while sheets of perforated metal have been used to conceal service ducts that sit beneath the ceiling.
“We used architectural materials that are high in quality, carefully sourced and crafted, with rigorous attention to detail,” the studio told Dezeen, “this is the very approach to ingredients that the chefs bring to crafting a meal.”
The same red shade of MDF has been used to make the tall gridded shelves that run along the rear wall of the restaurant, openly displaying wine bottles, glassware and jars of ingredients.
Cherry-red MDF has then been combined with black granite to form the service counter where guests are greeted by staff before being shown to their table.
Metal-frame dining tables with grey countertops designed bespoke by Ester Bruzkus Architekten have been dotted throughout the room.
One long communal table where guests are encouraged to “linger all day” has also been placed beside the restaurant’s entrance.
Berlin restaurant LA Poke takes its cues from Hockney painting A Bigger Splash
Each table is accompanied by timber or acid-yellow chairs by Danish furnishing brand Please Wait To Be Seated. There’s additionally a couple of wooden benches with seat cushions upholstered in mustard corduroy fabric by Kvadrat.
Red, yellow and steel editions of Muller Van Severen’s Hanging Lamps have been mounted on the restaurant’s walls as decoration. White-neon tube lights also wind and intersect across the ceiling.
Ester Bruzkus Architekten has been established since 2002. Remi isn’t the only Berlin restaurant designed by the studio – back in 2018, it completed LA Poke.
Taking cues from David Hockney’s 1967 painting A Bigger Splash, the eatery features vibrant pops of summery hues such as cobalt blue and sunshine yellow.
Photography is by Robert Rieger.
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