Haus 2+
Office ParkScheerbarth
TIMBER CONSTRUCTION
Arche Naturhauss
CLIENT
Holzmarkt Betriebs GmbH
YEAR
2023
LOCATION
Berlin, Germany
CATEGORY
Houses, Extension
Text description provided by architect.
Until the early 19th century, the Holzmarkt area on the river Spree was a central lumber port for Berlin.
It later became a border zone of the GDR, a vacant brownfield after reunification, and from 2003, home to the legendary techno club Bar25.
In 2012, this gave rise to “Holzmarkt 25”, a cooperative cultural quarter with a concert hall, a club, recording studios, restaurants, and many small kiosks and huts serving the public waterfront and drawing around 500,000 visitors every year.
With the new Haus 2+, the first all-timber building enters the stage: its progressive design and P commitment to sustainability set a clear statement amidst this seemingly improvised patchwork of buildings.
Fully clad in bright red wood, the three-storied addition marks the main entrance to the area. Its complex and curvy shape is composed of simple geometric volumes that offer individual room layouts for its diverse tenants – the 200 square meters are shared by a bakery and a tattoo studio, a booking agency and an artist, a photo studio, and a physiotherapist.
A tight budget and a small footprint required maximum space and resource efficiency. Therefore, architects Moojin Park and Ben Scheerbarth used what was available on site:
Like a “friendly parasite,” Haus 2+ shares the exterior stairwell of the neighboring concert hall, eliminating the need for its own CO2-intensive space for circulation.
It uses an existing basement as a floor slab and the district heating station inside as the main energy source. Its roof terrace integrates with Holzmarkt’s sequence of open arcades, bridges, and balconies.
Haus 2+ combines three timber construction systems. Internal walls are from mass timber, slabs from timber box elements, and exterior walls from timber frames, all clad with a timber façade.
Regionally prefabricated and screwed instead of glued, all components can be disassembled, segregated, and reused with little effort. In keeping with the cradle-to-cradle principle, the Haus 2+ echoes Holzmarkt’s roots – a trading port for wood.
