Apartment on Leipziger Straße

This apartment contrasts the brutalism of raw concrete with the elegance of natural stone, marble and fine wood. The eight-skyscraper complex lining Leipziger Straße in Berlin’s Mitte district - now one of the city’s hippest developments - was built during the era of the German Democratic Republic as a counterpoint to the towering buildings of West Berlin. In this project, architect Christopher Sitzler completely gutted and then renovated his own 100 sq. m apartment and studio in a design that exalts the rough essence of exposed structural concrete on walls and ceilings, while contrasting this with the natural stone, marble and fine wood of the furnishings and claddings.

The spatial design and layout was totally overhauled through wall fixtures and cupboard units, with an open-space kitchen, dining and living area at the heart of the new home. The office is a seamless extension around a corner of the open-space core, characterized by a full-height bookcase on the back wall. On the other side, sliding doors are used to separate the private bedroom area from the dining space.
The combined bedroom and bathroom has a bath and shower area on a slightly raised platform clad in white tiles.

The white marble cladding and the light oak of the fixtures and the furniture create a contrast and balance the exposed concrete surfaces that envelop these spaces. This diversity of materials created a need for a variety of switches and sockets - depending on the base material. As far as possible, flush mounted solutions were selected, such as from the LS 990 range in aluminum. When this was not possible, on the exposed concrete walls for example, the solution was the surface-mounted LS Cube range.

The result is in a contemporary, urban interior that truly exalts the setting in which the apartment is located and really mirrors the principle of qualitative sustainability that underlies Sitzler’s work in his quest to make buildings that integrate harmoniously into the context and age gracefully over time.