Hidden within bustling Berlin, this minimalist home transforms a former convenience store into a serene retreat where natural materials, filtered light, and quiet spatial composition redefine everyday living.
A Former Shop Reimagined as a Minimalist Berlin Home
Located on the ground floor of a nineteenth-century building in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, this renovated residence and studio transforms a once-forgotten convenience store into a peaceful urban sanctuary. Designed by Mar Plus Ask, the project balances Scandinavian restraint with Mediterranean warmth, creating a Berlin minimalist home where thoughtful simplicity, tactile materials, and carefully controlled proportions encourage slower and more mindful living.
Natural Materials and Soft Light Shape Everyday Living
The interior is organised between an open studio facing the lively street and a quieter domestic area overlooking the rear garden. Lime-plastered walls, polished concrete floors, integrated cabinetry, timber, leather, wicker, and muted earth tones create a rich material palette that softens the minimalist architecture. Abundant daylight filters through every space, allowing light and space to become the home’s defining design elements rather than decoration.
In the kitchen-dining room, a four-metre-long cast in-situ concrete kitchen island is harmoniously paired with a custom-designed dining table made out of leftover plywood. The latter is part of a series of bespoke timber furnishings of exceptional minimalist elegance that Ask and Mar designed for the project such as the three-metre-tall oak-framed windows that were manufactured in Denmark, and the wall-to-wall wardrobe that incorporates a hidden door separating the social and private quarters. Sparsely furnished with a mix of contemporary and mid-century Scandinavian pieces like Arne Jacobsen and Flemming Lassen’s Major sofa for &Tradition, Kaare Klint’s Safari chairs for Carl Hansen & Søn, and Alvar Aalto’s Golden Bell lights by Artek, the couple’s Berlin home/studio artfully blends Nordic simplicity and poise with Mediterranean textures and finishes – the perfect combination in the context of Berlin’s urban fabric if you ask us.
