Lovo is a residential building located just minutes from Ostbahnhof station. It serves as a home for LGBTQ+ community members—including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender residents, as well as others—some of whom have fled their home countries. Architects Christoph Wagner and Wenke Schladitz, working alongside the operator Schwulenberatung Berlin, designed a building that reimagines communal living across four floors. Rather than call it shared flats, the architects coined the term "floor communities"—a distinction that reflects the building's philosophy: residents share a floor as neighbors, not as an intentionally formed family unit. Floors 1 through 4 contain 31 rooms in total, with the first floor designed specifically as a care community, housing older residents, those with mobility challenges, and people living with HIV.

The ground floor features shops and a café—a vibrant gathering space for the community. Floors 5 and 6 are leased commercially to help sustain the building's operations. Since opening in 2019, this groundbreaking model has garnered international recognition, notably as part of the German pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, where it was showcased under the exhibition "Making Heimat. Germany Arrival Country"—even before construction was completed.

Over 200 metres of continuous balconies blur the boundary between the building and its surroundings, opening the structure toward both street and garden. A sculptural concrete stairwell and open gallery provide access, while the transparent ground floor offers glimpses into the garden beyond. Across seven floors, the building provides 1,200 square metres of residential and flexible living space. Each floor community has private rooms of roughly 14 square metres per resident, while kitchens, communal areas, and balconies function as shared territory. The upper floors are accessed via the concrete staircase leading from the garden. The fifth floor features a generous pergola-covered gallery, another social hub. Three maisonettes span the fifth and sixth levels. The façade palette—soft blue and rose—strikes a restrained elegance, enhanced by pale red roller shades in the rooms that create visual harmony throughout. The waiting list for residency remains impressively long.

www.c-wagner.de

Photography Credits:

Eric Tschernow
www.tschernow.de

(Published in CUBE Berlin 01|22)