Members of the experimental German collective discuss their subversive approach to architectural practice.

The 2022–23 Current Work series examines projects and firms enacting new modes of architectural practice, collaboration, and community engagement.

Founded ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, raumlaborberlin is an experimental collective working at the intersection of architecture, urban planning, art, and education. Though the collective’s nine members share a background in architecture, they resist simple categorization: They are self-avowed artists, performers, researchers, inventors, curators, and teachers. Eager to expand the definition of architectural practice, the collective—whose name means “space laboratory”—maintains a critical stance towards dominant modes of production, focusing instead on provocative participatory activations of urban space.