The vacant Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC) has been a talking point in Berlin since its closure in 2014. Since then, various parties have publicly voiced their desire for an economically viable restoration of the building and a reactivation of the entire site. A fresh look at the origins of this aluminum colossus shines light on important aspects of Berlin’s recent history. It reveals that the ICC is much more than an architectural icon. Crossing the threshold into its soft interior is to embark on a journey back to an era in which an optimistic vision of the future prevailed.
GRAFT Journal
The Hybrid City Façade told through Three Designs
Facade
Creative Process
Hybrid design
A significant proportion of GRAFT’s façade concepts are characterized by hybrid forms and the ambivalence of their elements. In the following introduction to the concept development process, we outline three designs in which the façade plays a defining role. Charlie Living, BRICKS, and A LASKA are three recent Berlin projects – two already built, the third currently under construction – that exemplify our approach to the idea of the city façade.
A Manifesto on Mediatecture - Ten thoughts on the evolving relationship between people, media, and the built environment
Future of Work
Media
Digitization
Augmented Reality
This manifesto identifies the essential trends and their solutions for a successful future of our media environments. Design and knowledge come together to redefine architecture - Through decades of experience through international projects around the globe, founding partners Thomas Willemeit, Wolfram Putz and Lars Krückeberg (GRAFT) and Prof. Nikolaus Hafermaas (GRAFT BRANDLAB) sketch the outlines of this world in all its dimensions.
Healing Architecture
Healthcare
Housing
Sustainability
Hotel
For many years GRAFT has been working intensively and also in cooperation with medical professionals and scientists on the topic of "Healing Architecture" and the question of how a carefully planned environment can contribute to health as well as accelerate recovery processes. We would like to present you some examples of projects planned and already realized by GRAFT, which are not only architecturally convincing, but also link the topics of building and health in a forward-looking way. Language: German
Unbuilding Walls Travel Grant 2019
Social design
GRAFT Travel Grant
We’re happy to share the realized projects of our two TRAVEL GRANT 2019 winners: Brooke Adams’ UNBUILDING HERE and Antonio Giráldez López’ MORE THAN WALLS.
Stories are the Social Currency of the World
Social design
Hotel
Culture
Hotels and residential buildings are two architectural typologies that cater to very similar fundamental human needs, on the one hand providing shelter and privacy and on the other acting as stages for social interaction. As boundaries between the private and public blur, we are seeing a transformation of residential typologies. But have apartment buildings been learning from hotels? Or is it the other way around, as the “home away from home” slogans of hotels around the world would have us believe?
Reinventing Workspaces
Future of Work
A city’s development is inextricably linked to mobility—the movement of people and goods. Urban planning in the 20th century was based on the separation of dirty, noisy traffic from the unpolluted, human urban fabric, but global megalopolises today still suffer from the growing implications of traffic. The combination of zero-emission, low-noise mobility with deep digitization and AI will have an enormous impact on the evolution of cities and rural areas, while new mobility concepts are expected to change our understanding of communal spaces and infrastructure.
Collective Design Process at Floating University Berlin
Public Space
GRAFT Travel Grant
With the support of GRAFT Travel Grant, Katherine Ball travelled to Berlin this summer to perform public research in a polluted rainwater basin receiving the runoff from the former Tempelhof airport. This basin is the location of Floating University Berlin, an educational experiment that brings together neighborhood residents (including the local mosque, refugee camp, garden colony, and police station) with students and professors from universities across Europe. In this essay, Katherine Ball gives us insights to her concluded research.
The Johanna and Eduard Arnhold Square - A role model for today
Social design
Public Space
Culture
To publicly commemorate the patronage of donor couple Johanna and Eduard Arnhold and the civic engagement of the Jewish bourgeoisie in Berlin, the project of a new Johanna and Eduard Arnhold Platz in the center of Berlin, initiated by Peter von Becker, was presented for the first time on Thursday, June 17: with the first drafts and statements for an artistic-urbanistic design by GRAFT founding partner Lars Krückeberg and the artists* Tatjana Doll, Julian Rosefeldt, Karin Sander. Lars Krückeberg was 2018/2019 scholarship holder in the Villa Massimo in Rome, donated by the Arnhold couple to the German State, where he realized the project Relative Cosmos - Fragmented Oikos.
Futopolis: Die 4 Thesen der Trendstudie
Mobility
Sustainability
Public Space
How urbanization affects cities and the countryside, what trends will shape urban planning and development, and what this means for society and the economy. Language: German
New Mobility
Mobility
The development of a city is inextricably linked to mobility - the movement of people and goods. The combination of zero-emission, low-noise mobility with profound digitalization and AI will have an enormous impact on the development of cities and rural areas, while new mobility concepts are likely to change our understanding of municipal spaces and infrastructures. In an interview with expert Stefan Liske, GRAFT discusses the mobility of the future.
