Building is a permanent task at the Forum. Families grow, children move out, life arrangements change, and the rooms are supposed to keep up. Over the decades more than one hole has been knocked through the wall between two adjoining houses. The most recent stage was the largest: a new building, the energy retrofit of the entire stock and an energy concept of its own.
The new building at Köpenicker Straße 172/173
In 2016 the first residents moved into the new building. It closes the gap in the street and answers a question the founding generation had to face sooner or later: how do you stay part of the community when stairs become an obstacle? The new building is step-free and has a lift, which makes it possible to live at the Forum into old age. It was built to a high insulation standard.
Energy from our own roof and from deep below
In parallel the Forum retrofitted the older buildings at Eisenbahnstraße 21 and 23 and Köpenicker Straße 174 and 175 for energy efficiency, as far as the architecture allowed. The heat comes from a system of its own: combined heat and power units generate electricity and use the engine heat for hot water, heat pumps draw energy from ground probes around 100 metres deep and from the air, and heat recovery feeds waste heat back into the cycle. The aim is to buy in as little primary energy as possible and to keep CO₂ emissions low. Operation and further development are looked after by a working group of its own.
A room for everyone
In 2022, just in time for the fiftieth anniversary, the common room at Köpenicker Straße 175 opened. For fifty years the Forum had celebrated, met and taught in changing makeshift spaces. Now there is a place that belongs to everyone.
Klaus Novy Prize 2022
In its anniversary year the Forum received the Klaus Novy Prize for co-operative building and living. The award honours projects that show how shared housing can be organised durably and affordably. For the Forum it was confirmation of a fifty-year experiment.
