On a winter afternoon at KAOS (an acronym for Kreative Arbeitsgemeinschaft Oberschöneweide) — located inside a brick warehouse on the Spree River in southeast Berlin that dates to the late 1800s, when it was part of an electric power supplier — everyone working in the 7,500-square-foot main hall was wearing thick jackets and wool hats. It was substantially warmer in the smaller nooks that had been stacked along the inner walls like Tetris blocks: a small kitchen with a long wooden table; a music studio with a jumble of instruments; an event space with a bar. The 20 or so designers and makers there that day (about 60 come and go; rent is so low that some artists keep second studios elsewhere) were consumed by their projects. Sehan Poulton, a metalsmith from Vermont, was polishing a half-finished gauntlet for a suit of medieval armor that he was making from scratch. Nearby, the Hamburg-born artist and production designer Henry Baumann was sanding down the surface of a tubular lounge chair made from several types of reclaimed wood. KAOS’s two managing directors, the multidisciplinary designers Anka Broschk and Jascha Vogel, entered a workshop filled with pleated vases in a variety of materials (metallic foil, brass, acrylic, waterproof paper) that belonged to Jule Waibel, a Stuttgart native who focuses on transforming materials by folding them. Typical of the way the community collaborates with tools, she shares the custom steaming machine she invented with other tenants.

KAOS (pronounced “chaos”) opened in 2013, but Broschk and Vogel have devoted the last few years to formalizing the enterprise: Every tenant now pays a modest monthly rent that covers their own space, with an added charge for any communal workshops they use. They have learned that, in order to thrive, KAOS requires some structure. Though there were few rules at the beginning, “as we grew,” Vogel says, “we understood that a drum player in a band can’t also be the full-time manager.”

London

Old Paradise Yard