This Time Tomorrow

floating presents itself as a place for art, culture and the exchange of knowledge. It is located in the rainwater retention basin of Tempelhof Airport and can be seen as a standalone oasis in the south of Berlin. The new design, which forms the four existing buildings – gym, urban forest, greenhouse and sauna – into a conglomerate, is divided into three urban spaces along a straight axis. The first square combines the material store, the noisy laboratory and the workshop and is introduced by a pergola with a suspended archive. The archive is positioned along the ramp from the street and forms the entrance to the floating through reused railroad masts with undulating Airtex textiles suspended between them. Information panels are stretched between the railroad masts using steel cables, so that as you walk down the ramp, the past can be explored on the righthand side and the present is gradually revealed on the lefthand side as the botany dissolves. Two stacked containers for loading and unloading are placed perpendicular to the pergola to guide the path towards the straight axis of the footbridge. Behind them, a sounding square opens up with the laboratory and the workshop. The workshop is set into the basin and is connected to the platform of the existing building by two basic heights. It is constructed using old tent poles and is closed off from the water by a singlesided work surface. In order to provide barrierfree access, a ramp on the northern side encircles the space and makes it possible to store material in front of the platform.

Along the axis, a further space is spanned between the cylindrical ‚ToiKo‘ building, which combines the use of sanitary facilities, compost and greenhouse, and the existing pavilion of the Bow-Wow studio. In order to limit the width of the space, a halfopened wooden shelter has been inserted. The old greenhouse is revitalized by a hydroponic concept and, together with the sauna and the prototype pool in front of it, forms the end of the square. The space in ‚ToiKo‘ is formed by the scaffolding elements of the former ‚Rain Forest‘ pavilion and clad with translucent polycarbonate multiskin sheets. The materials water, compost and manure circulate between the compost toilets, the compost trough and the plant troughs suspended in the scaffolding poles, forming a cycle.

The third space at the end of the walkway is divided into two areas by a raised platform. While the lower area connects the office and auditorium, the kitchen and bar are located on the higher platform. With its walls made of paper blocks and sliding doors covered with Airtex, the office is designed as a semiwarm room and can be warmed up in winter by electric heating. The office is also an open plan space that can be used for workshops and seminars if required. The space is separated from the auditorium by a threshold and can be accessed via the eastern side. Four used railroad masts unfold the waveshaped tent roof made of Airtex with steel cables, which catches the web axis and can be used flexibly as a cinema screen. The kitchen and bar are designed as a steel structure on the raised level. While the kitchen operates with swing doors controlled by cable pulls, the roof of the bar is movably mounted and follows the position of the sun along an axis every hour. Access to the level is barrierfree. While one ramp leads up to the platform with the bar and kitchen, the one next to it leads down into the pool. Opposite it is the retreat, which forms an organic tent structure with used, twisted cable wires and connected Airtex textiles and creates a place of tranquillity through its placement in the reeds.
The surfaces are primed using reused railroad sleepers: concrete sleepers as foundations and wooden sleepers as planking. The load is distributed by train tracks.