Adlershof media location on the move

Amended development plan gives new impetus

Creative and vibrant, Media City Adlershof is home to approximately 140 businesses such as production studios, sound artists, stage set painters, cutters, set designers, make-up artists and costume designers – many of them working together frequently. Yet, the location is reacting to the huge change processes within the industry brought about by the latest developments in the media and technology sectors.

So far, the development plan for this particular part of Berlin Adlershof only allowed the establishment of commercial businesses related to the film, TV, video and theatre sectors. However, in view of recent changes in the industry, the the term “media” has been considerably extended to include, for instance, sectors such as digital media, music, event or exhibition construction. Adlershof Projekt GmbH’s Marketing and Sales Manager Ute Hübener welcomes this development as it has got things moving. “We are currently conducting promising negotiations regarding the remaining properties,” she explains.

Berlin-based furniture designers System 180 are among the companies for which the development plan amendment has proved a windfall. The product that lent the company its name is a highly flexible distinctive steel tube system blurring the lines between design, event and furniture construction. General Manager Andreas Stadler names some of the projects his team realised over the last years: the “instant-facade” of 450 metres in length which System 180 produced to cover the hangars at Berlin Tempelhof Airport during the BREAD & BUTTER tradeshow. Or the spiral staircases leading the visitors of a disused cokery plant in the Ruhr region right into the huge old coal funnels.

Andreas Stadler’s company processes steal pipes of four different widths between 20 an 60 milimetres for exhibitions and events around the world as well as for temporary installations in museums, but also for stairways, facades and furniture. With growing success, the range of his customers steadily increased until his company’s idyllic domicile in Berlin’s Schöneberg district was bursting at the seams. “It was the tightness of the place that prevented us from growing any further,” Stadler remembers. He was unable to invest into new machines as there was no room left to put them in. Nor was there any room for more than the 50 employees he had at that time.

Meanwhile, Stadler found a solution. System 180 bought the former Ideea hall in Adlershof. “In the past, we used to plan projects with Ideea and felt for them when they went bancrupt,” he says. Stadler had long had an eye on the hall initially designed by exhibition stand constructors Ideea for similar purposes. With the active support from Adlershof Projekt GmbH, it finally worked: on a 15,000 square metres property comprising a total floor space of  6,500 square metres and a gallery space of another 1,000 square metres, the new location meant a substantial gain in space. “Now we have about three times the space,” says Stadler, excited by the media and science location’s urbanity and synergy effects. “If you ask me, we fit perfectly with the place.”

By Peter Trechow for Adlershof Special