Why there's espresso at Frameworks from August.

It started in a swimming pool

In 2013, when I started, I had nothing to show for myself. No portfolio, no customers, no workshop. What I had was a space in Stattbad Wedding, and a gallery that gave it to me before I'd proved anything.

For anyone who ever saw it: the building went up in 1907, designed by Ludwig Hoffmann, the city architect Berlin owes half its handsome public buildings to. It was a bathhouse for a working-class district where almost nobody had a bathroom of their own, two pools, a large one and a small one. The war damaged it badly, it was rebuilt in the late fifties, and for nearly half a century it was an ordinary swimming hall. In 2001 it closed on hygiene grounds and sat empty.

In 2009 it became a cultural space. The name was a pun: statt Bad — instead of a pool. There were clubs and boiler rooom in the drained basins, exhibitions in the changing rooms, studios in the spaces where towels used to be handed out. Art, music, design, street art, all at once and usually a little too loud. It was one of the places where you could see what Berlin was capable of in those years: take a room with no use left and give it a new one, then see who turns up.

I turned up. Through Open Walls Gallery, who were curating at Stattbad then. They gave me space, for very little money, with no guarantees and no conditions beyond meaning it. They carried me through the first stretch, the part where you still don't know whether the thing is going to work. Frameworks became official in April 2014. Stattbad is now  gone. The city shut it down in 2015 over building code violations, permanently. 

What stayed with me

Circular economy usually gets talked about in terms of material. Wood, offcuts, reuse. That's one half of it, and we take it seriously. The other half is what circulates between people: space, access, the willingness to give somebody a start before they've earned it.

What I was given in 2013 didn't just keep me afloat. It changed what I think a business is for. When you support someone at the beginning, what comes back is hard to put a number on and changes everything anyway. The place that made it possible for me doesn't exist any more. The thing itself transfers.

Our store at Mariannenstraße 26, in a part of Kreuzberg that runs on exactly that kind of mix. And it was obvious we should do something with it that doesn't only serve us.

So we built a bar

A small espresso bar, in the middle of the shop. And we took our time finding the right person for it.

That's Hoa, who works as Antibarist.

He's an advisor.  He talks about beans, roast and water the way we talk about wood, glass and mounts. He provides opinions that come from experience, and without making the thing bigger than it is. He won't ask what you usually drink. He'll ask what you like, and then hand you something better than what you would have ordered. Which is exactly what we've been doing with frames for twelve years.

From 1 August

The bar runs for two months, 1 August to the end of September. Wednesday to Saturday, from 8am until closing.

For the first two weeks of August, every hot drink is €3. Espresso, cappuccino, filter, all of it. Normal prices after that.

You can come by for a coffee without needing a frame. You can come with a picture under your arm and do both. And if you're talking to us about framing, there's an espresso with it.

Come by.

Frameworks Store Mariannenstraße 26, 10999 Berlin Bar: Wed–Sat from 8am Antibarist on Instagram: @antibarist