Plans are moving forward for a “low-tech transformation” of West Berlin’s storied film and television studios Berliner Union Film Ateliers (BUFA) called Atelier Gardens from London-based developer Fabrix and MVRDV. 

Approval has been granted for a six-acre adaptive reuse project at the southern edge of the former Tempelhof Airport in the merged borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. 

The comprehensive master plan will repurpose two of the site’s existing 20th-century structures into a center for social justice activism surrounded by a radically re-greened campus courtesy of British landscape designers Harris Bugg. 

Studio 1, a 100-year-old building that has served as the set for several different important films, including Bob Fosse’s Oscar-winning 1972 classic Cabaret, will get a colorful curtain-clad makeover in addition to a new skylight and other “sensitive” interventions making the 7,000-square-foot facility a vibrant space for film screening, meetings, and various forms of culture-centered collaboration.

The site’s newer building, House 1, will be wrapped in a biophilic, timber frame-backed facade that extends to the roof to create a covered rooftop garden. Both offer users office space and a plethora of new materials that its developers say align with the former film studio’s prolific past and future uses.

“Our vision for Atelier Gardens is to build on BUFA’s rich history and build a new home for exchange, action and global impact”, Fabrix CEO Clive Nichol said in a statement. “To create a place for pioneers, we have to be pioneering. From growing mushrooms in dark spaces to creating new structures from materials we refuse to send to landfill, we are using progressive techniques to drive a true circular economy and make the site as self-sufficient as possible.”

“The original studios serve as a reminder of the creative impulse that Berlin gave the world in the 1920s and are a starting point for the journey we are now embarking on,” he continued. “As with all of our projects, we are repurposing the existing buildings and adapting their use to meet the evolving needs of our urban environment. Spaces that are built to make profound change can sometimes be very academic or sterilized. For us, it is essential there is a sense of exploration, play, and storytelling.”

This project represents the second collaboration between Fabrix and the Rotterdam-based architects following a recent adaptive reuse project in London that was announced in September. Studio 1 will be completed this December while the rest of the site will be finished along a five- and ten-year program. Archinect will have more updates as they become available.