A larger group study area sits at one end, while the other end houses a kitchen. This glazed garden pavilion by architecture studio Barkow Leibinger offers scenic study spaces for resident fellows at the American Academy in Berlin (+ slideshow). Six study spaces, each with an area of seven square metres, run through the middle. A plot housing a disused bathhouse provided a site for the single-storey building. A steel platform covered in oak planks provides a durable flooring surface both inside and outside the building. Related story: «Serene» concrete pavilion marks the entrance to a First World War cemetery
The resulting Fellows Pavilion boasts glass walls inside and out, a looping veranda and an angular roof made up of hyperbolic paraboloids. Photography is by Stefan Müller, apart from where otherwise stated. «The form of the pavilion’s roof is a result of ‘ruled geometry’ – offset straight lines rotated to produce four hyperbolic paraboloids, a shape that is both abstract and familiar, since it reflects, if only in elevation, the gabled roof of the historical villa,» said Barkow Leibinger in a statement. Facing a lake in Berlin’s Wannsee area, it sits at the south-west corner of the gardens that surround the academy’s home inside a 19th-century villa. «The distinctness of the pavilion is further enhanced by both its seeming to ‘float’ above the garden’s green lawn, and its dominant white colour.»
The interior is broken up into a simple grid, creating eight rooms. Walls between rooms and the central corridor feature even more glazing, but can be screened behind curtains for privacy, while high-level windows allow light to travel through the entire interior. Glass doors allow every room to be opened out to the surrounding veranda, which is also sheltered beneath the roof. A mid-19th-century sculpture sits nearby.
