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SHORT FILM

Into the Mind

Neo-Brutalist Master Arno Brandlhuber

In the 15 years since he founded his practice in Berlin, Arno Brandlhuber has helped to reshape contemporary Germany with his daring neo-Brutalist constructions, such as the jagged concrete Antivilla he carved out of a former lingerie factory in Potsdam and the former St. Agnes church in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, which he transformed into the exhibition space of the influential König Gallery.

Play Film Watch Into the Mind: Arno Brandlhuber

WRITER Charly Wilder
DIRECTOR Ramon Haindl
DP Sebastian Heindorff
ART DIRECTOR Lawrence Hazen
SOUND Phillip Zeller

In the 15 years since he founded his practice in Berlin, Arno Brandlhuber has helped to reshape contemporary Germany with his daring neo-Brutalist constructions, such as the jagged concrete Antivilla he carved out of a former lingerie factory in Potsdam and the former St. Agnes church in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, which he transformed into the exhibition space of the influential König Gallery.

WRITER Charly Wilder
DIRECTOR Ramon Haindl
DP Sebastian Heindorff
ART DIRECTOR Lawrence Hazen
SOUND Phillip Zeller

A Brandlhuber building doesn’t just introduce new forms; it asks new questions, brings forth new modes of discourse, a philosophy he refers to as “argumenting architecture.”

Now Brandlhuber is applying this philosophy to the raw industrial landscape of eastern Berlin with two ambitious projects that are currently underway. He’s transforming a hulking Soviet-era graphite silo in the Lichtenberg district into a mold-breaking new headquarters for his freshly reshaped practice, Brandlhuber+. And in the nearby Rummelsburg neighborhood, Brandlhuber is one of the key architects designing Flussbad, a creative campus at the intersection of wellbeing, culture and sustainability at the site of the historic Lichtenberg River Baths.

We went behind the scenes on both of these projects in the first installment of our short-film series, “Into the Mind,” which delves deep into the creative process and private world of some of the most fascinating figures of our time.

Arno Brandlhuber at his office on Brunnenstraße Berlin's central Mitte district. Photographs by Ramon Haindl.

His freshly reshaped practice Brandlhuber+ is housed in one of two Soviet-era graphite silos in Berlin's eastern Lichtenberg district.

When his first attempts to attain bank financing were rejected, he took inspiration from the medieval hilltop town in Tuscany, San Gimignano, whose Romanesque and Gothic tower architecture he thought resembled the Lichtenberg silos.

The building site at San Gimignano Lichtenberg.

A Brandlhuber building doesn’t just introduce new forms; it asks new questions, brings forth new modes of discourse, a philosophy he refers to as “argumenting architecture.”

The new Brandlhuber+ office will function more as a laboratory, said Brandlhuber.

"We will have the basement, which is our real hands-on workshop. And the top is like modeling, thoughts and conceptual engagement, said Brandlhuber.

Arno Brandlhuber has left an indelible stamp on the German architectural scene with his daring neo-Brutalist constructions.

"It's a two-level building, even if the ground floor has a 50-meter high ceiling," said Brandlhuber of his new headquarters, San Gimignano Lichtenberg.

"In the last centuries, we've produced industrial sites that we don't use any longer in the same way," said Brandlhuber. "But still it's a kind of habitat that we built."

"And who else would we have built it for than for ourselves?" said Brandlhuber. "It's a very simple cycle. We did it, so best is, we learn to use it in a better way."

Brandlhuber at San Gimignano Lichtenberg, the new headquarters of his architectural practice, now called Brandlhuber+.