Architecture shapes how we live together. We believe it therefore carries responsibilities that extend beyond the act of building. It is both a cultural practice and a public responsibility.
A KIND OF SPACE is an interdisciplinary practice for architecture, research and design founded in Berlin in 2024. We seek projects that ask more of architecture than simply providing a building.
We are particularly interested in situations where something already exists, whether a building, a landscape, a material resource, a particular way of working or simply a place whose future has become uncertain. Not every project begins with a clear brief. A building may no longer serve its purpose. An organisation may be considering how a place should develop over the coming decades. Needs may be changing without it being clear whether this requires building, adapting or doing less. We see these moments of uncertainty as productive beginnings.
Every project begins with what is already there.
We look carefully before proposing change. Existing structures, material resources, cultural memory and patterns of use are not constraints to be overcome but sources of knowledge. Sometimes the right response is substantial transformation. Sometimes a relatively small intervention can fundamentally change how a place works. And sometimes the most valuable outcome is a clearer understanding of what should happen next.
The beginning of every project matters.
The earliest conversations can reveal possibilities, test assumptions and establish the ambitions and responsibilities that guide everything that follows. We work with clients to understand what they have, what they need and what their resources might allow before deciding what architecture should become.
Our work ranges from strategic studies, programme development and feasibility through architectural and urban design to planning applications, leading details and artistic site supervision. For later stages of planning and construction, we collaborate with experienced partners whose technical expertise complements our own. This allows us to bring together the knowledge each project requires rather than imposing the same structure on every commission.
We are interested in architecture that grows from its context and responds carefully to the people who use it. Places should feel generous rather than imposing, familiar without being nostalgic and capable of adapting as circumstances change. Beauty matters to us, not as something exceptional, but as something that can become part of everyday life.
A space creates a place. A place is inhabited by people in whatever circumstances life brings. Working, gathering, living, loving, remembering, seeking shelter or beginning something new. A good place makes this possible with generosity, without prescribing exactly how life should unfold within it.
A KIND OF SPACE grew from more than two decades of architectural experience and an earlier understanding of making. Before studying architecture, founder Christoph Felger trained as a cabinetmaker in the Black Forest and later studied furniture and product design at Central Saint Martins in London. He subsequently spent more than two decades at David Chipperfield Architects in London and Berlin, where he was Partner and Design Director.
This architectural experience is complemented by commercial and strategic expertise. Managing Director Manuel Stahl brings a background in project development, value creation and long-term capital structures. Together, these perspectives allow architectural quality, economic viability and long-term value to be considered from the beginning rather than as separate concerns.
Architecture is never the work of one person.
A KIND OF SPACE is conceived as a collaborative framework that brings together different perspectives, disciplines and forms of knowledge. We work with clients, architects, engineers, specialists, craftspeople and others whose experience can change how a question is understood and how a project develops.
The name A KIND OF SPACE describes this approach rather than a fixed authorship. Even our handwritten name changes according to who writes it. Individual voices remain visible within a shared framework. The practice continues to evolve in the same way, through the people, relationships, projects and questions that become part of it over time.
