The Bethanien complex was originally built in the mid-19th century as a hospital. Its architecture still carries that origin: long corridors, high ceilings, and a sense of institutional gravity that has never fully disappeared. During the Cold War, the building stood close to the Berlin Wall, placing it at the edge of West Berlin. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, this proximity left visible scars — neglect, damage, and periods of occupation shaped the space, echoing the city’s division and instability.

Following the fall of the Wall and the reunification of Berlin, the complex entered a new phase. Rather than being erased or rebuilt from scratch, Bethanien was reactivated as a cultural site. Layers of its past remain present: the hospital, the years of abandonment, the improvised life of occupation, and the slow process of transformation that followed.

Today, Kunstquartier Bethanien functions as a cultural center housing artists’ studios and ateliers, music and art institutions, and a restaurant. It is a working environment defined by continuity and use rather than spectacle — a place where different practices coexist within a space shaped by history.

The Berlin Studio exists within this context: an active working space embedded in a building that has absorbed conflict, transition, and reinvention, and where the act of making remains inseparable from the place itself.