The new building

The new building at Köpenicker Straße 172/173 closes the gap in the street. It has been occupied since 2016. It is the youngest of the six Forum buildings and the first that was planned to be step-free from the start.

A question that comes up sooner or later

Anyone founding a co-operative in 1972 is not thinking about lifts. Four decades later the question asked itself: how do you stay part of the community when stairs become an obstacle? Moving away was out of the question for the founding generation. So they built.

The house was designed by the Berlin practice Anne Lampen Architekten. It has 22 flats, all step-free and reached by lift. That makes it possible to live at the Forum into old age without leaving the block. On top there is a roof terrace open to all residents.

Topping-out

Pictures from the topping-out ceremony on the building site at Köpenicker Straße.

Built and converted at the same time

The new building was the visible part of a larger stage. It supplies itself through a heat pump and solar modules on the roof. In parallel the Forum retrofitted the old buildings for energy efficiency, as far as heritage and neighbourhood protection allowed, and changed over the supply. Since then heat and electricity have come from a system of its own made up of combined heat and power units, heat pumps with ground probes and photovoltaics. Operation and further development are looked after by a dedicated working group.

Ground floor: not housing but neighbourhood

The ground floor of Köpenicker Straße 172 holds commercial space. This is where the Vorratskammer, the co-operative’s self-organised organic shop, is located, and where the Museum des Kapitalismus has its exhibition and event rooms. The new building is therefore not purely residential; it follows the pattern of the other houses: work below, living above.

How two houses became six is told in the building history. Where it sits in the chronicle of the Forum is described under Neubau und Modernisierung.

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