LOVO Berlin: A place to live for diversity at Ostkreuz

LOVO is an integrative housing project by Christoph Wagner Architekten together with Wenke Schladitz. The building is located in Berlin-Friedrichshain and is one of the few places for homo-, bi-, trans- and intersexual people who need care and some of whom have a refugee background.

With LOVO, Studio Christoph Wagner Architekten wants to create a living space for queer people with and without a refugee background who are unable to cope with everyday life without help. To this end, this residential building offers assisted living. With its focus on the LGBTI* community, this is the first project of its kind.

The new building was completed in 2019 by Christoph Wagner Architekten in collaboration with interior designer Wenke Schladitz and has been habitable ever since. At the 15th Venice Biennale in 2016, it was presented in the German Pavilion under the slogan “Making Heimat. Germany: Arrival Country”. Christoph Wagner initiated the project back in 2015 together with the artist Ulrich Vogl and the operator, Schwulenberatung Berlin. Everyone involved was convinced of how important it was to place such a highly integrative project in a central part of the city.

The building has seven floors and fills one of the last gaps in a Wilhelminian-style neighborhood in Berlin-Friedrichshain. There are 30 residential units, eight to ten of which are intended for refugees. They are spread across four shared flats, each with seven to eight single rooms. One of them is designed as a shared care home. There are also three maisonette apartments on the 5th and 6th floors, which are available on the open rental market.

LOVO is an acronym and stands for “Lebensort für Vielfalt am Ostkreuz”. The total gross cost of the building is 3.05 million euros.

The LOVO building is characterized by a sculpturally designed external staircase, which is arranged on the courtyard side. It thus corresponds to a shortened side wing. The maisonette apartments can be reached via an arcade. As the stairwell is half-open and “cold”, you step out of the shared apartments directly into the fresh air. In this way, the architects avoid corridors that could appear institutional. In addition, the raw concrete offered greater design options during construction thanks to the thermal decoupling.

Towards the neighborhood, the building is open and friendly. It has large windows, balcony bands and an inviting color scheme. Warm pink tones alternate with cooler blue tones and the gray tones of the concrete. This creates a balanced relationship.

The arrangement of the storeys across the entire width of the façade required lengthy coordination with the city planning office. In the end, the project prevailed. Among other things, it was nominated for the DAM Prize 2021 and won the Berlin Award 2021. As a house with the KFW 153 standard, LOVO is also an efficiency house with high energy standards.

An early idea for the LOVO site was to create a building group project. However, Christoph Wagner and Ulrich Vogl quickly decided to pursue a more open concept with a social agenda instead. Together with Schwulenberatung Berlin, they developed a spatial program for various forms of cohabitation and exchange. It was particularly important to them to provide support for LGBTI* people in challenging situations.

There are now three commercial units on the first floor of the building. These include office space for the Berlin gay advice service and the open neighborhood meeting place Café Transfair. Residents have the opportunity to work in this café. The income is also used to cross-finance the housing project. The rental income from the three maisonette apartments also partly subsidizes the rents of the flat-share residents.

According to Christoph Wagner Architekten, the total cost of LOVO was EUR 2,100 per square meter, including ancillary building costs and land. This makes it a very affordable project. This increases the financial scope for implementing the social agenda.

Architect Christoph Wagner prefers to speak of “floor communities” rather than shared apartments. According to him, they describe a larger community, but at the same time always leave room for privacy. This is also reflected in the architecture with its different zones of public and private. The communal staircase in each apartment leads to a living and dining area. Together with the bathroom, this forms a transition zone to the more private living areas.

The residents’ individual rooms primarily fulfill the role of personal shelters. The walls are built to a high standard of protection. Small entrance areas create a buffer zone to the corridors. Despite the relatively small room size of 14 square meters, the clear height of 2.90 meters creates a generous feeling of space. Each room also has floor-to-ceiling windows and its own balcony.

There is a communal garden in the inner courtyard of LOVO, which is shared by the residents. This is intended to open up the building to the neighborhood and promote social participation. The heterogeneous social and user structure is also intended to prevent stigmatization of the residents.

The initiative of the architect, who is also the owner, developer and designer, has resulted in a housing project based on solidarity. It combines civic engagement and architectural aspirations. According to Christoph Wagner, LOVO “creates visibility and a place to live in the center of the city for people who struggle with structural exclusion and discrimination.”

In 2020, Christoph Wagner published the following interim report on the project: “The building has now been in use for over a year. The café supports interaction with the neighborhood, and the building is more frequented, more lively and more extroverted than residential buildings of a comparable size. For example, while many of the residents spent a lot of time in front of the TV after moving in, many of them now prefer to spend time in the garden or on the balconies.”

He continues: “There are weekly get-togethers for cooking together, gardening and other activities. On their own initiative, a hairdresser regularly visits the common room and offers the residents free haircuts. Some of the residents, whose outward appearance deviates from the conventions of their biological gender, report that they dared to visit a hairdresser for the first time in their lives in this protected environment. The house has been well received and there has hardly been any fluctuation so far. The waiting list for a place to live is (unfortunately) extremely long, as there is currently no alternative institution in Berlin.”

Also interesting: The Jewish garden in the Gardens of the World underlines Berlin’s cultural and religious diversity.