Berlin’s Flussbad campus begins its phased opening with Reethaus designed by Austrian architect Monika Gogl.
"A geometric reed roof gives the Reethaus both its name and identifiable form: the massing is a result of the building’s internal demands for rich acoustics and the “temple-like” qualities Gogl envisioned. The architect cited Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo, designed in 1972 by Teodoro González de León and Abraham Zabludovsky as a reference point for how the building’s internal and external areas connect. Reethaus’s concrete walls wrap the central reed form as a series of planted, stepped terraces, each packed with rainwater-retaining volcanic rocks to support a planting scheme that, once mature, will soften the building into its surrounding site. “It was clear that with this site I had to work like a landscaper,” Gogl said.
As an act of landscape architecture, the whole building is sunken into the ground, reducing its visual impact and providing a sense of withdrawn intimacy. A wide picture window offers a panoramic vista of the Spree, while an internal planted courtyard brings natural light to an open circulatory space that wraps the central atrium."