AFF
AFF is an architectural studio with East German roots, founded by brothers Martin and Sven Fröhlich in Weimar. Today, AFF is co-led with Ulrike Dix, Monic Frahn, and Valentino Vitacca as a collective of architects, craftsmen, and researchers, based in Berlin and Lausanne. They teach and research at various institutions and have founded the EAST laboratory at EPFL in Lausanne. In addition to their strong expertise in building within existing structures and for educational and public facilities, AFF focuses on craftsmanship as the most important component of an enduring building practice. As shown in several exhibitions, they draw their formal affinity from an ambiguous fundus, blending their appreciation for traditional constructions and spatial impressions. This approach combines elements from post-Soviet pioneer camps with relics of industrial heritage. Various educational buildings and projects, like the Schutzhütte at Fichtelberg, Sächsisches Bergarchiv in Freiberg, or the listed experimental grain storage Kornversuchsspeicher in Berlin, have been published internationally and awarded architectural prizes.
HANS SCHOEPFLIN
Hans Schoepflin was born 1941 into a Loerrach family of entrepreneurs that wrote economic history in 20th century Germany with their mailorder business. In the 1970s Hans Schoepflin moved to the United States, where he began a successful career as a venture investor, thus laying the foundation for enabling his philanthropic endeavors. In 1998 he established the Panta Rhea Foundation in the United Sates. In 2001 followed the Schoepflin Foundation in Loerrach, Germany, and, in 2020, Spore Initiative in Berlin. At the core of Hans Schoepflin’s philanthropic commitment lies the strengthening of democracy and the concern for future generations.
JOSEPHA LANDES
Josepha Landes is a Berlin based architecture critic and editor of Bauwelt magazine. She holds Master degrees in architecture and architecture studies from TU Dresden, ENSA Strasbourg and NSAD San Diego. She was born in Dresden in 1988.
LB 18 AFF spore initiative, is the eighteenth title from LONG BOOKS COLLECTION.
The Spore project, as well as this book, is the result of collective collaboration between clients, architects, engineers, project controllers, construction managers, and craft companies. Maintaining the building and filling it with ideas remains the task of the users.
PRESERVING EARTH’S DELICATE BEAUTY
Spore Initiative weaves together several strands from almost 30 years of philanthropic work. This place, that has been created in Berlin Neukoelln, is a cross pollination of my understanding of environmental justice and corporate accountability, of democratic practice and the preservation of biodiversity, of art and creativity, and of education understood as deeper learning. To better explain this, I need to go back to the beginnings of my philanthropic engagement.
Spore has its roots primarily in my activities in the USA and Central America, and in a series of campaigns that I have carried out there together with many partners. These campaigns and projects have always been about reducing the negative impact that we as humans have on the fragile ecosystems of our planet. One of these campaigns was, for example, directed against this big company that bought thousands of acres of land in the Mojave Desert just east of Los Angeles to gain access to an aquifer whose water it wanted to exploit for profit. In another campaign we fought an international corporation that had bought an abundant and pristine fresh water spring in the foothills of Mount Shasta in Northern California, where they wanted to build the then world’s largest water bottling plant. And there was a third campaign we launched to remove dams on the Klamath River in Northern California and Southern Oregon, which were threatening the ecosystem of an entire region by preventing salmon from returning to their breeding grounds to spawn.
With each of these campaigns we – a large network of partners and supporters –prevailed against corporate power. And we all learned a lot in the process. Above all, these campaigns made us acutely aware of how ignorant so many people are of our inherited knowledge of nature and the delicate balance of life on this planet. Yet, during these campaigns we also came into close contact with indigenous communities who maintain a deep connection with nature in their everyday lives. In the Klamath Delta, for example, we learned how vital the return of the salmon is for the fragile ecosystem of the whole region and the people who live there. This experience in particular made me challenge some common notions of how we approach philanthropic endeavors. This was the beginning of one of the paths that led to Spore.
Another path that has led to Spore was my understanding of art: I am interested in art as a creative practice rooted in learning processes and traditional knowledge. Together with yet other partners, the idea emerged during various activities in Central America to build an art collection that would document the devastating effects of colonization and capitalism on the ecosystems of the so-called “Global South”. This idea built on the experiences I had already gained during the above mentioned campaigns. In Mexico, I came to know people and initiatives whose everyday cultures include methods and techniques that are in balance with the natural foundations of life. These comprise, for example, preserving traditional seed varieties, keeping native bee populations, building with local materials or passing on stories across generations. The more concrete plan that eventually developed from these encounters was to create a place for those who have preserved traditional knowledge. It was to be a place where they could pass on this knowledge in exchange with many other actors from different backgrounds. This place is Spore.
I am often asked: Is Spore a museum? No, it is not a museum in the classical sense. Yes, objects of art are exhibited in its building. But Spore is not about putting delicate items behind glass or red ropes so that they can be admired from a distance. It is about interaction, about dialog. It is about imparting knowledge. It is about what role our
SPORE INITIATIVE BERLIN, GERMANY
2018 - 2023
“Everything to come has already begun.” The slogan with which Spore Initiative greets its visitors neatly sums up the art and cultural foundation that in spring 2023 took up residence in its new home in Berlin-Neukölln: that this place draws its name from the “spore” as a basic, enduring building block of life forms – we’re talking here about fungi, single-cell organisms, algae and moss, organisms that are largely overlooked and yet of fundamental significance for our lives – is both fitting and relevant. The cultural centre sees itself as a platform for exchange on questions of nature, civilisation and inequality, with a particular focus on Central America. While the architecture eschews any direct semantic references, its design, construction and functional principles play with the underlying narrative.
This spore – we can think of this as a germ cell, the starting point for potential life, released from the underside of a fern frond, drifting through the air before settling anew – has landed on Hermannstrasse. The neighbourhood’s perimeter block structure, originally the product of Wilhelminian-style, grand-scale urban expansion, has over the years eroded and evolved into the present-day “Berliner Kiez”. Within this discontinuous context of bars, cemeteries and open-all-hours convenience stores, the new Spore Initiative building asserts a self-assured, if somewhat quirky presence. The building derives its sense of coherence from the way it wraps around and responds to the conditions on-site, resembling a carpet of moss easing forward to fill the gaps. Additionally, it has a symbiotic relationship with its neighbour, the House of Non-Profit Journalism, which exhibits a similarly staggered profile. Its street frontage steps back from the road – essentially sidestepping a listed runway beacon mast that signalled the approach to Tempelhof Airport until its closure on 30 October 2008. The building makes a virtue of this necessity, widening the street space to form various forecourt and entrance areas. The folding back of the façade also lends the building a more relatable scale: the robust materiality of the massive, monochromatic layers of red concrete and bricks remains distinctly palpable, but the façade avoids being overbearing. Extensive glazing mediates between the urban and interior realms, affording passers-by a view inside and inviting participation.
That these bands of glazing appear to wrap so elegantly around the ground floor of the Spore without any intermediary supports, is due in part to the building’s elaborate ribbed ceiling. The branching
pattern of interwoven ribs tells of the transmission of forces from the polygonal cantilevered sections near the street back to the load-bearing cores within. To achieve such generously sized openings, too long for bearing beams alone, the wall planes in the storey above act as upstand beams for the floor slabs beneath. The system of ribs, illuminated by accompanying strip lights, has a partially symmetrical branching pattern that evokes associations with rhizomes, the root system of mushrooms. Slender strips of sound absorbers are embedded in the ceiling slab for better room acoustics. To achieve a flush underside, timber slats were inserted into the formwork, and later recovered and reused in the construction of a canopy on the rooftop terrace. Nets, roots, rhizomes – given the Spore Initiative’s spectrum of themes and focus on cohabitation, it seems only natural to draw parallels with the approaches and models of the modern French school of thought. One can easily trace a thread from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s post-structuralist rhizome theory for describing the world from the 1970s to Bruno Latour and Nokolaj Schultz’ memo on the emergence of an ecological class written during the Covid lockdown. Once again, “everything to come has already begun”, to which one could add “and we are a part of it”. As such, the Spore links the past and future, a “here” with many “theres” – which in turn answers the question of what a centre focussed on Central America has to do with Berlin, namely “everything”.
The rhizome theory, and with it a broader sense of ecological awareness, manifests itself in the building’s architecture through its respectful approach to the pre-existing. This finds concrete expression, for example, in the design of the façades, where the entire exhibition level is clad externally with recycled bricks, or in the outdoor areas where worn blocks of concrete – jokingly called “concrete butter” – have been repurposed as seating, or in the sanitary facilities where reclaimed washbasins have been recycled and adapted to meet modern requirements, for example, by raising them to a usable height. That the building makes liberal use of concrete is certainly a valid criticism – after all, many of the building’s interiors are defined by exposed concrete walls and the slender ribbed patterning of the ceilings. But it does this with a certain degree of integrity. The architects draw on the only apparently simple tactic of striving to employ every means at their disposal – whether that be a building material, detail or product – in the most honest, purest, and where possible, most
natural way. As laudable as this is, it can quickly be compromised by the constraints of affordability – a fact that explains the shortcomings of many other construction projects: those who wish to use genuine materials, generally pay a premium. For example, the aluminium profiles that help the “shop windows” of the Spore Initiative to shimmer like a continuous ribbon of mirrors are non-anodised and therefore custom-made at extra cost. It is here that the avant-garde must answer its calling and insist so persistently on its demands, and hone them to such a degree of perfection, that it breeds imitators and may ultimately become a new standard, or at least a real possibility.
One should be careful about equating a present-day fascination with the high-gloss looks of a 1970s post-and-beam façade, or with the craftsmanship of a farmhouse bench, with a yearning for times past. Rather, it is a longing for comprehensibility – not the appearance of things, but their essence. The Spore as an idea and the Spore as a house is an undeniably exclusive, but at the same time, ambitious and transparent realisation of this noble idea. The elaborate details – an articulated metal curtain as a spatial divider, or bulky, oversized door hinges more akin to shipbuilding, or the hundred or so wooden shell seats in the auditorium reclaimed from numerous office clearances – every one of these solutions speaks of more than just itself. All are linked, to each other and to their original and their future references, and all stand in relation to one another and to a space beyond themselves. In the Spore, everything to come has already begun.
JOSEPHA LANDES
FEATURED WORK
SPORE INITIATIVE, BERLIN
2018 - 2023
Client
Schöpflin Stiftung
Gross floor area 4.116 sqm
Gross room volume 16.675 cbm
Usable floor area 2.233 sqm
Property size 1.556 sqm
Architecture AFF Architekten
Project Management
SMV Bauprojektsteuerung
Structural Engineer Schnetzer Puskas Ingenieure
Construction Management Sedeño Bauplanung
Mechanical Engineer
W33 Ingenieurgesellschaft
Landscape Architect
POLA Landschaftsarchitekten
Lighting Designer
Licht Kunst Licht
Product Design
Produktdesign Leipzig
Ilja Oelschlägel
Fire Safety Consultant
Peter Stanek
Building Physicist and Acoustic Consultant
BBS Ingenieurbüro
Food + Kitchen Consultant
Heike Laser
Images
© Hans-Christian Schink (pages 06, 14, 15, 20-24, 32, 33, 36-46)
© Tjark Spille (cover, pages 02, 08, 09, 13, 19, 27, 28, 48, 52-59)
OUR MOST SPECIAL THANKS TO
PUBLICATION
DATA INFORMATION
Our entire team at AFF, where everyone plays a unique role in the success of our projects.
In addition to a professional and constructive collaboration, we thank our project partners who helped make this book possible:
Schnetzer Puskas Ingenieure
Sedeño Bauplanung
SMV Bauprojektsteuerung
W33 Ingenieurgesellschaft & Hans Timm Fensterbau
Furthermore, we thank Hans Schoepflin and Josepha Landes for their wonderful thoughts on this (book) project.
COLLECTION AMAG LONG BOOKS
VOLUME
LB 18
TITLE AFF
SPORE INITIATIVE
ISBN
978-989-35617-4-4
PUBLICATION DATE
April 2024
EDITOR AND GENERAL MANAGER
Ana Leal
COLLECTION CONCEPT
Tomás Lobo
EDITORIAL TEAM
Ana Leal, architect
Filipa Ferreira, designer
Inês Rompante, designer
João Soares, architect
PRINTING
LusoImpress
LEGAL
DEPOSIT
480255/21
RUN NUMBER
1000 numbered copies
PUBLISHER AND OWNER AMAG publisher
VAT NUMBER
513 818 367
CONTACTS
hello@amagpublisher.com
www.amagpublisher.com
Other titles about this collection:
LB 01 DAVID ADJAYE mole house
LB 02 NICHOLAS BRUNS guimarães chapel
LB 03 DAVID ADJAYE the webster
LB 04 CARVALHO ARAÚJO casa na caniçada
LB 05 ANDRÉ CAMPOS | JOANA MENDES centro coordenador de transportes
LB 06 ANDRÉ CAMPOS | JOANA MENDES PEDRO GUEDES DE OLIVEIRA fábrica em barcelos
LB 07 DAVID ADJAYE winter park library & events center
LB 08 DAVID ADJAYE 130 william tower
LB 09 BRANDENBERGER KLOTER ARCHITECTS community hall laufenburg
LB 10 BRANDENBERGER KLOTER ARCHITECTS school pfeffingen
LB 11 BRANDENBERGER KLOTER ARCHITECTS double kindergarten rüti
LB 12 BRANDENBERGER KLOTER ARCHITECTS
school aarwangen
LB 13 BRANDENBERGER KLOTER ARCHITECTS
school birrwil
LB 14 ANGELO CANDALEPAS the castle
LB 15 PAUL MURDOCH ARCHITECTS flight 93 national memorial
LB 16 ÁLVARO SIZA monte da lapa volume l
LB 17 SO – IL amant
AMAG LONG BOOKS COLLECTION brings together a unique selection of projects that establish new paradigms in architecture.
With a contemporary and timeless conceptual graphic language, the 1000 numbered copies of each LONG BOOK will document works with different scales and formal contexts that extend the boundaries of architectural expression.