Berlin's 3 Adaptive Reuse buildings reflect a city that has always rebuilt itself from its own ruins. The Heizkraftwerk Rüdersdorfer Straße — a former Stalinist-era heating plant — was repurposed rather than demolished, preserving its monumental industrial shell. Werner Düttmann's St. Agnes church found a second life as the König Galerie, its Brutalist concrete interior proving ideal for contemporary art.
MVRDV and Hirschmüller Schindele's Atelier Gardens HAUS 1 transforms a Tempelhof-adjacent industrial building into creative workspace, adding new layers while keeping the original structure legible. In each case, the approach is subtractive rather than additive — revealing what already exists rather than concealing it.
