Loca­tion: Ber­lin
Period: 2020 to 2023
Cate­gory: New build | turn­key con­s­truc­tion
Cli­ent: Inva­li­den­straße 5 GRAFT Design­haus GmbH Krü­cke­berg, Putz, Wil­le­meit GbR Ber­lin
Area: 1,370 m²

A resi­den­tial and com­mer­cial buil­ding inclu­ding under­ground par­king and out­door faci­li­ties was built for GRAFT Archi­tek­ten at Inva­li­den­strasse 5 in Ber­lin-Mitte. The 1,370 m² pro­perty is loca­ted directly at the inter­sec­tion of Inva­li­den­straße and Acker­straße. The buil­ding con­sists of a first floor, 5 full storeys, a stag­ge­red storey and a base­ment. The six storeys of the so-cal­led “Graft­Lab” house the office space of the GRAFT archi­tec­ture firm, other office com­mu­ni­ties from the archi­tec­ture and crea­tive scene, com­mer­cial units and seve­ral apartments. 

Com­mer­cial units are plan­ned on the first floor, which are acces­si­ble from both Inva­li­den­strasse and the adja­cent Acker­strasse. The office flo­ors extend from the ground floor to the 4th floor. The new Ber­lin head­quar­ters of GRAFT Gesell­schaft von Archi­tek­ten mbH is loca­ted on the lower office flo­ors. Func­tional rooms such as kit­chenet­tes, toi­lets, tele­phone booths and sto­rage and ser­ver rooms are ali­gned with the eas­tern gable wall on all office flo­ors. Modern working envi­ron­ments with num­e­rous mee­ting rooms for dif­fe­rent team sizes and usage requi­re­ments are being crea­ted on the four office flo­ors. Trans­pa­rent glass par­ti­ti­ons struc­ture the spaces and create an open, light-floo­ded atmosphere. 

On the 3rd and 4th flo­ors, in addi­tion to the office space, a resi­den­tial unit is arran­ged bet­ween the street and cour­ty­ard faça­des. On the 5th and 6th flo­ors (top floor), three mai­so­nette apart­ments are con­nec­ted via an inter­nal stair­case across both levels. In addi­tion, three fur­ther smal­ler resi­den­tial units (stu­dios) were crea­ted on the 5th floor. 

The sup­port­ing struc­ture was desi­gned as a mono­li­thic rein­forced con­crete ske­le­ton con­s­truc­tion. The gable wall facing the exis­ting buil­ding was mainly made of cavity wall ele­ments. The façade was rea­li­zed as a mul­lion-tran­som alu­mi­nium-glass con­s­truc­tion with rear-ven­ti­la­ted alu­mi­nium sheet clad­ding. The high trans­pa­rency of the outer shell allows natu­ral light­ing even with deep floor plans and thus makes a sus­tainable con­tri­bu­tion to the energy balance. The exte­rior walls on the gable ends were fit­ted with a ther­mal insu­la­tion com­po­site system. 

The foun­da­tion was a shal­low foun­da­tion. The base­ment was con­s­truc­ted as a white tank. The stair­case was con­s­truc­ted as a con­ti­nuous rein­forced con­crete struc­ture and was rou­ted from the base­ment through all flo­ors to the top floor in one go. 

The open-plan offices offer access to the out­doors on all levels. Addi­tio­nal inter­nal stair­ca­ses and com­mu­ni­ca­tion areas merge the three office levels into a sin­gle unit with maxi­mum flexibility. 

Large areas of expo­sed screed and expo­sed con­crete were used in the rooms. The walls and flo­ors in the con­fe­rence area on the 4th floor were given a PU coa­ting. These mee­ting and con­fe­rence rooms can be fle­xi­bly par­ti­tio­ned using mobile par­ti­tion wall sys­tems and a large-for­mat pivot door (door leaf dimen­si­ons: approx. 2.20 m/ 3.00 m). 

The inte­rior fit-out of the offices and apart­ments will be tail­o­red to the design of the buil­ding. All apart­ments also have seve­ral exits to the outside. 

The buil­din­g’s bal­co­nies are firmly inte­gra­ted into the façade design and emerge directly from the floor plans of the inte­rior spaces. They create flowing tran­si­ti­ons bet­ween the inte­rior and exte­rior areas. The step­ped pro­jec­tions and reces­ses of the façade create a dyna­mic, struc­tu­red exte­rior view that offers the resi­dents both pri­vacy and a place to retreat. The varied design of the bal­co­nies and façade con­tours empha­si­zes the L‑shaped struc­ture as a striking, modern buil­ding that blends har­mo­niously bet­ween the lively street side and the quiet inner courtyard. 

Each apart­ment has been indi­vi­du­ally desi­gned and fea­tures dif­fe­rent design con­cepts and high-qua­lity fit­tings, inclu­ding seve­ral bath­rooms and spe­cial ele­ments such as jacuz­zis and green roof ter­races. The apart­ment par­ti­tion walls were made of solid mate­ri­als. Expo­sed con­crete sur­faces, floa­ting hea­ted screeds and 2‑layer par­quet were used in the inte­ri­ors. Wall and floor cove­rings were sel­ec­ted to match the fur­nis­hings and func­tion of the rooms. 

The roof above the top floor is desi­gned as a flat roof con­s­truc­tion with exten­sive greenery.

The under­ground par­king garage was lowe­red for the out­door faci­li­ties con­cept and pro­vi­ded with inten­sive gree­n­ery, which enables a flowing land­scape tran­si­tion to the exis­ting green space to the north. For sus­tainable rain­wa­ter manage­ment, the under­ground car park cei­ling will be fit­ted with a rest­ric­tive roof for rain­wa­ter reten­tion as required.