Mäusebunker

Zentrale Tierlaboratorien der Freien Universität Berlin

Gerd Hänska, Magdalena Hänska, with Kurt Schmersow · 1982 · Berlin

In short

A sealed concrete lab for the Freie Universität, built 1971 to 1982 with walls tilted at 18.5° and rows of blue air intakes.

Its cost rose from 60 to 93.7 million DM, and in 1975 a senator called it Berlin's "first public building ruin".

The Charité planned to demolish it in 2017; protests saved it, and Berlin listed it as a monument in 2023.

Siana Pick

Walk the Teltowkanal path and look across at the long flank: from there the blue air intakes read as a ship's gun battery, and the triangular windows sit between them like hatches.

The building, measured

Architects: Gerd Hänska (1927–1996); Magdalena Hänska (1924–1986); Kurt Schmersow (collaborator)
Client: Senator für Bau- und Wohnungswesen, for the Freie Universität Berlin
Original use: Central animal laboratories: breeding of lab animals and animal experiments
Current use: Vacant since 2019/2020; owned by the Charité
Construction: Stopped in autumn 1975; the site stood idle from 1976 to 1978
Completion: February 1982
Style: Brutalist
Heritage: Baudenkmal (listed monument), Obj.-Dok.-Nr. 09070102
Condition: Vacant
Address: Krahmerstraße 6–12, 12207 Berlin

Dates

1971: building permit (19 May) and start of foundation works
Autumn 1975: construction stopped; the site stood idle from 1976 to 1978
1978: work resumed
1982: completion and opening (27 February)
2003: transferred to the Charité as FEM
2012: Charité decides on a replacement building in Berlin-Buch (opened 2019)
2017: Charité files demolition notice for the Mäusebunker and the Hygiene Institute
2019: Landesdenkmalrat recommends keeping the ensemble; use ends
2020: petition by Gunnar Klack and Felix Torkar; Brandlhuber and König offer to take over the site
2021: Hygiene Institute listed (January); LDA launches the Modellverfahren Mäusebunker (August)
2022–2023: four expert workshops under the Modellverfahren
25 May 2023: listed as a monument
2024: Festival für urbanes Wohlergehen held on the site (September)
2025: administration preparing a Konzeptverfahren; no reuse announced as of the 15 October 2025 public debate

Worth knowing

Every second floor is a technical floor. The blue pipes outside feed them, and the triangular dormers light the lab floors in between.
The foundations took two years and 1,300 driven piles on marshy ground by the Teltowkanal.
A two-storey test building on Bäkestraße, the "Kleiner Mäusebunker", tried out the construction first. It has since been demolished.
A tunnel links it to the Hygiene Institute across the road, and the listing treats the two as one ensemble.
It has its own documentary: Battleship Berlin by Nathan Eddy, 2021.

Plan set

A-01 Overview
The Mäusebunker is the Zentrale Tierlaboratorien of the Freie Universität Berlin, an animal research lab in Lichterfelde that bred its own lab animals and housed the experiments under one roof. Gerd and Magdalena Hänska designed it, and it went up from 1971 to 1982 as a Brutalist block 117 m long with walls tilted at 18.5°. Every second floor is a technical floor, and the 94 blue pipes on the facade feed those floors fresh air.
Architects
Gerd & Magdalena Hänska
Built
1971–1982
Style
Brutalism
Location
Berlin-Lichterfelde
Download the poster
Mäusebunker. Siana Architecture. NTS. Concept illustration.
A-02 Technical floors between the lab floors
Nine levels stack in strict alternation, starting with a technical floor at the bottom: TK, KG, HK, EG, 1.OG, 2.OG, 3.OG, 4.OG, 5.OG. The technical floors (Technikgeschosse) hold the air-handling equipment and are lower, 2.09 m to 2.51 m against 3.20 m to 3.24 m for the labs.
In 1967 to 1968 the engineers at Ing.-Büro Krauss compared this layout with a single central technical zone. Both needed the same space. Gerd Hänska still argued, in his report of 11 December 1968, that hygiene demands and researchers' need to adjust their own rooms made the alternation the only workable option. Each lab takes its conditioned air from the technical floor above or below.
Read the full explanation
Mäusebunker. Siana Architecture. NTS. Concept illustration.
A-03 The blue pipes
There are 94 intake pipes, on the long facades only: 39 on the HK, 26 on the 1.OG and 29 on the 3.OG. They feed 28 air-handling units. They reach far out from the wall to draw air from beyond the heat that builds up at the concrete surface.
The blue belongs to an interior colour code: sapphire blue marks the "unclean" technical zones, yellow and red the clean zones, green the mixed ones. The pipes carry that code outside.
Read the full explanation
Mäusebunker. Siana Architecture. NTS. Concept illustration.
A-04 The tetrahedral dormers
The fixed windows sit in pyramid-shaped dormers that always face north. The labs get glare-free daylight and no direct sun, which keeps light and temperature steady. Pipes and dormers follow technical needs and the room plan, and the building history calls the result a machine-like character.
The listing text goes further: the brief shaped the design, and the architects stressed it on purpose.
Read the full explanation
Mäusebunker. Siana Architecture. NTS. Concept illustration.
A-05 The 18.5° walls
The precast sandwich panels are mounted at 18.5°. No source we found explains why the Hänskas chose that number. The building history offers readings: the truncated pyramid recalls a tent or roof house, a grounded form that suggests calm and safety, and the slope with its ramps keeps visitors at a distance from an animal-testing building. There is also a practical gain: the receding upper floors let the building sit close to the western site boundary.
With a height of 23.70 m and a base of 37.50 m, the angle is measured from the vertical.
Read the full explanation
Mäusebunker. Siana Architecture. NTS. Concept illustration.
A-06 One grid, five blocks, 1,300 piles
A 2.60 m grid runs the length of the building in axes 0 to 45. Main cross walls stand at 2.60 m or 5.20 m, and the facade panels come in the same two widths. That is why the floor plan shows on the outside. Four expansion joints cut the body into five sections of about equal length, each stable on its own.
The ground by the Teltowkanal is soft alluvial soil, so the building stands on 1,300 prestressed driven piles tied by concrete ground beams. Piling took two years and pushed the foundation cost from 9 to 16.5 million DM.
Read the full explanation
Mäusebunker. Siana Architecture. NTS. Concept illustration.

Why it looks like this

Sources: Wiese & Janik, Baugeschichte und Beschreibung (2020); Denkmaldatenbank Berlin 09070102; Wikipedia.

Technical floors between the lab floors

Nine levels stack in strict alternation, starting with a technical floor at the bottom: TK, KG, HK, EG, 1.OG, 2.OG, 3.OG, 4.OG, 5.OG. The technical floors (Technikgeschosse) hold the air-handling equipment and are lower, 2.09 m to 2.51 m against 3.20 m to 3.24 m for the labs.

In 1967 to 1968 the engineers at Ing.-Büro Krauss compared this layout with a single central technical zone. Both needed the same space. Gerd Hänska still argued, in his report of 11 December 1968, that hygiene demands and researchers' need to adjust their own rooms made the alternation the only workable option. Each lab takes its conditioned air from the technical floor above or below.

See sheet A-02

The blue pipes

There are 94 intake pipes, on the long facades only: 39 on the HK, 26 on the 1.OG and 29 on the 3.OG. They feed 28 air-handling units. They reach far out from the wall to draw air from beyond the heat that builds up at the concrete surface.

The blue belongs to an interior colour code: sapphire blue marks the "unclean" technical zones, yellow and red the clean zones, green the mixed ones. The pipes carry that code outside.

See sheet A-03

The tetrahedral dormers

The fixed windows sit in pyramid-shaped dormers that always face north. The labs get glare-free daylight and no direct sun, which keeps light and temperature steady. Pipes and dormers follow technical needs and the room plan, and the building history calls the result a machine-like character.

The listing text goes further: the brief shaped the design, and the architects stressed it on purpose.

See sheet A-04

The 18.5° walls

The precast sandwich panels are mounted at 18.5°. No source we found explains why the Hänskas chose that number. The building history offers readings: the truncated pyramid recalls a tent or roof house, a grounded form that suggests calm and safety, and the slope with its ramps keeps visitors at a distance from an animal-testing building. There is also a practical gain: the receding upper floors let the building sit close to the western site boundary.

With a height of 23.70 m and a base of 37.50 m, the angle is measured from the vertical.

See sheet A-05

One grid, five blocks, 1,300 piles

A 2.60 m grid runs the length of the building in axes 0 to 45. Main cross walls stand at 2.60 m or 5.20 m, and the facade panels come in the same two widths. That is why the floor plan shows on the outside. Four expansion joints cut the body into five sections of about equal length, each stable on its own.

The ground by the Teltowkanal is soft alluvial soil, so the building stands on 1,300 prestressed driven piles tied by concrete ground beams. Piling took two years and pushed the foundation cost from 9 to 16.5 million DM.

See sheet A-06

Story

The Freie Universität needed a central home for its laboratory animals, and in the mid-1960s Gerd and Magdalena Hänska began designing one. Their scheme was complete by 1967. The building would breed its own animals under controlled hygiene and house the experiments under the same roof, a brief with few precedents in Europe. A two-storey test building on Bäkestraße, later called the Kleiner Mäusebunker, tried out the construction first. It has since been demolished.

Work started in 1971 on marshy ground near the Teltowkanal. The foundations alone took two years and 1,300 driven piles, and their cost almost doubled. By March 1975 the estimate had climbed to 93.7 million DM, and construction stopped that autumn. Finance senator Klaus Riebschläger called it Berlin's "first public building ruin". The site stood idle from 1976 to 1978. Work resumed in 1978, the fit-out ran four more years, and the labs opened on 27 February 1982.

The form follows the services. Technical floors alternate with lab floors, so every second level holds air handling. Outside, the technical floors show as rows of blue intake pipes and the lab floors as tetrahedral window dormers. The cross-section is a stretched, stepped pyramid with walls inclined at 18.5°. Inside, small cell-like rooms line the corridors, finished in stainless steel and tile.

The Charité took over the building in 2003 and moved its animal research to a new building in Berlin-Buch, which opened in 2019. In 2017 it filed to demolish both the Mäusebunker and the Hygiene Institute next door. A petition, open letters from architects and a takeover offer from Arno Brandlhuber and Johann König followed. The Landesdenkmalamt launched the Modellverfahren Mäusebunker in 2021 to study reuse and listed the building on 25 May 2023. As of the October 2025 public debate, the administration was preparing a Konzeptverfahren, and no new use had been announced.

Analysis

The Mäusebunker is a machine for clean air wearing armour. Every visible move comes from the brief: the sloped walls hold the stacked technical floors, the pipes feed them, the dormers bring daylight into the lab floors without glare. Hänska made the services the ornament, and the 2.60 m grid ties the inside to the outside so tightly you can read the floor plan off the facade. Few buildings of the period are this legible.

That legibility is also why it reads as sinister. A sealed hygienic building has to keep everything out, and the Hänskas let the facade say so. The battleship nickname sticks because the building does look armed. Berlin brutalism mostly means housing slabs or churches; here the material serves a lab, and the toughness has a reason.

Set it beside the Institut für Hygiene und Mikrobiologie across the road, by Fehling and Gogel, and the pairing gets better. Both are concrete, both from the same campus plan, and they are linked by a tunnel. Fehling and Gogel shaped theirs with curving, organic masses; the Hänskas went for acute angles and repetition. The listing authority treats them as an ensemble, and it is right to. Seen together, they show two answers West Berlin gave to the same question in the same decade.

The preservation case won, but the harder part is still open. The building works as one system: the ventilation runs everywhere or nowhere, and asbestos removal comes first. That rules out easy partial uses and explains why bouldering halls and galleries stayed on paper. Listing saved the shell. The building now needs a client with as much patience as the original one, and every empty year raises the bill.

Diagrams

Technical floors alternate with lab floors. Conditioned air comes from the technical floor above or below.
94 intake pipes on the long facades feed 28 air-handling units. The blue is the colour code for the unclean technical zones.
Fixed windows sit in pyramid dormers that face north, so the labs get daylight without direct sun.
The cross-section is a truncated pyramid. The 18.5° is measured from the vertical.
A 2.60 m grid, four expansion joints, five blocks, and 1,300 driven piles.

Poster

The shape, the floors, the air, the light and the five blocks, on one sheet.

Photographs

Sloped flank across the autumn garden, Leonhard Lenz, CC0 source
Forecourt and stepped north end, Leonhard Lenz, CC0 source
Front: sloped base and window dormers, Denis Barthel, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Long side elevation, Denis Barthel, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Stepped end from the forecourt, 2019, Gunnar Klack, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Black and white, full length, Rolf Dietrich Brecher, CC BY-SA 2.0 source
At night, Emediacreation, CC BY-SA 3.0 source
Transformer tub at the entrance, Rolf Dietrich Brecher, CC BY-SA 2.0 source
Model photo, 1970, Gerd Hänska, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Cross sections, Gerd Hänska, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Perspective and elevations, Gerd Hänska, CC BY-SA 4.0 source