Berlin, Germany, 2023-07-25 - 

L’atelier is pleased to unveil its lobby furniture collection designed for Berlin International, a vibrant and young academic institution in the heart of Berlin where architecture, design, graphism, and business courses are taught to students worldwide.

When COVID-19 arrived in 2020, Berlin International was still settling in to its new location at Salzufer Strasse. Now that students are back on campus, the institution was eager to animate its faculty lobby which, until now, was a 200m² room used mainly as a transitional entrance hall to classes and office space.

The faculty request was simple: to redesign their entrance lobby with an intervention that would create a solid identity for the space, with a minimum budget and within a short time frame. There was also a request for modularity to facilitate activities such as exhibitions, lectures, and informal gatherings.

L’atelier devised the principle of a triangular staircase, both in plan and section – it could also be called a quarter pyramid. The module serves as a place to sit or exhibit, but its main feature lies in its repetition.

The simple, duplicated shape can suddenly metamorphose into many other objects and create sub-spaces within the large lobby room. The official Colors of Berlin International inspire the stripes of blue and pink. Their graphism empowers the playfulness of the modules on wheels, where students can feel like they are in a playground, composing the room’s space by themselves.