Baumhäuser

On the edge of Berlin’s Tiergarten, hidden among stylish embassies and the postmodern architecture of the late 1980s, are three variegated clusters of stacked owner-built homes. They are the result of an intensive building and planning process that began in 1981, when Josef Paul Kleihues invited Frei Otto, surprisingly enough, to take part in the Berlin IBA in 1987. Surprisingly, because there was hardly any housing in Otto’s portfolio and because he was not part of the postmodern avant-garde of the time, which dominated the Berlin IBA. Otto was primarily known for his phenomenal tent structures, such as that of the Olympic Stadium in Munich of 1972…