LOVO Building / Christoph Wagner Architekten + Wenke Schladitz

LOVO is a 6-story residential building focused on the LGBTQ+ community, including inhabitants with refugee background. Located in Berlin's Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough, it was designed and developed by the Berlin based architects Christoph Wagner in collaboration with Wenke Schladitz, together with Schwulenberatung Berlin, an organization providing psychosocial counseling to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and intersex people. In 2014 Christoph Wagner and his partner, the artist Ulrich Vogl, found a plot next to the very central Ostkreuz train station. When a large refugee influx hit the city in 2015, the couple felt the need to help this population. Combining this wish with their own life experience in the LGBTQ+ community, they partnered with Schwulenberatung Berlin, who brought in new programmatic ideas and input on ways to deal with the property.