Wunderblock Foundation
In the following photos and drawings, photographed in September 2025, we present the buildings that have been renovated and restored on the grounds of the Wunderblock Foundation. The buildings are located on the outskirts of Schenkenberg, a district of the municipality of Groß Kreutz (Havel), on a plot of land of approximately 6 hectares. Since 2022, the site has been the headquarters of the Wunderblock Foundation, established by the painter Katharina Grosse.
The site was developed from the mid-1950s onward with buildings and outdoor facilities for cattle breeding and belonged to the cattle farm of the LPG Völkerfreundschaft Jeserig (agricultural production cooperative) until the early 1990s. Before the Wunderblock Foundation purchased the property, the buildings and outdoor areas had been used as storage facilities and workshops for more than 20 years.
Groß Kreutz lies within the catchment area of Berlin. Its districts are former villages that have since been transformed and merged with new residential and commercial developments. The old LPG site, a former industrialized agricultural area, blends into these suburban and rural surroundings, with buildings and outdoor spaces that had lost their original purpose. Functionless, neglected, and altered by interim uses, the site and its buildings—whose locations seemed randomly chosen and whose outdoor and interstitial spaces appeared overly expansive—presented themselves at first glance.
We encountered buildings from different periods. Older structures, clearly recognizable as agricultural buildings, are low-rise with large gable roofs and small windows. They are typical barns with haylofts. Newer, large halls are standardized structures made of prefabricated reinforced concrete elements, which served as feed storage.
All the buildings share the following characteristics: exterior walls and roofs reduced to an uninsulated, thin-walled shell, highly load-bearing floors and ceilings, and wide-span roof structures. They were designed both for storage and for housing animals. Our work began with the discovery and uncovering of spaces that previously did not exist on the site. The foundation’s open, development- and research-oriented program made it possible to adapt the spatial program to the existing spaces. The result was a combination of complete renovations and partial renovations which, together with the restored and gutted buildings, provide impetus for subsequent uses and transformations.
The Hub (B8). The renovation work began with the former machine shop. Here, the renovation strategies applied across the site were first tested and their transferability assessed.
The stables with haylofts, the former stables (B4b, B5, B6, B7) offer, according to the space requirements, a small-scale grid of concrete columns and exterior walls of masonry with small window openings. The floor slabs here are equipped with simple technical infrastructure for animal husbandry. The roof structures are designed for use as haylofts; a close grid of large-format wooden trusses creates comparatively spacious rooms. A solid ceiling or reversible planking forms the floor to the stable below. This intermediate ceiling can be removed without much effort if needed.
The collapsed roof of Building 6 (ruin) was removed without replacement. The exterior walls remain standing and provide a climatically protected outdoor space—a hortus conclusus.
In Building 4b, the intermediate ceiling was removed, except for a central walkway. The floor slab was also removed and replaced with a gravel surface. The building now serves as a temporary event space.
The feed stores (B1, B2, B3), former barns now used as summer and winter studios, archives, and storage, are products of industrial mass production. Large, column-free, and weather-protected spaces were required under conditions of extreme material economy. The building foundations are made of smooth concrete with thickened edges to support the surrounding wall columns, which are grooved to accommodate the thin, stacked wall panels. The widths of the column grid allowed for large wall openings at any point, accommodating large transport vehicles and loading equipment. Where necessary, existing wall panels were omitted to create gates, which were then closed with large wooden sliding doors.
The roof structures of the gently sloping gable roofs, composed of timber beams and prestressing steel as available at the time of construction, form exceptionally delicate spatial structures for the comparatively large spans. To save weight, the roofs were covered with very thin fiber cement panels, some also incorporating translucent materials for natural lighting.
During the renovation, the existing building structures were largely preserved and partially reused in new functions.
Careful structural modifications were made to the roofs to meet the needs of the studio operations. Where required for the new use, they were re-covered with thermally insulated, ultra-lightweight industrial panels and supplemented with translucent hollow-core panels in the roof surfaces, gables, and eaves to provide natural light to the studios. This allowed the existing, delicate roof structures to be fully preserved and remain visible inside. Individual room segments within the halls were upgraded for their intended use, both in terms of building physics and indoor climate, through the installation of insulated wooden structures, either as an inner layer of the exterior walls or as self-contained, house-within-a-house constructions.
Building services infrastructure is integrated into these structures and, where necessary, into raised or newly installed floors, including heating systems suitable for thermally activated concrete in the floor or in insulating plaster on the walls. The inner wall layers in the studios and storage rooms provide smooth working surfaces or spacious storage areas.
The external appearance of the buildings has changed only imperceptibly as a result of the structural interventions. Elements from contemporary industrial architecture were used for the visible new components. These elements, refined for targeted application on the buildings through precise cutting and joining, sharpen and accentuate their outlines. The delicately drawn new elements and the robust existing structure communicate in a new form. This new form is suitable for reinforcing the perception of the warehouse buildings as an ensemble and imbuing them with evocative images of a traditional typology. Despite all the traces of use, their original purpose, and their undeniable age, we experience them as re-evaluated and revitalized.
