When an empty space became available for rent on Berlin’s Potsdamer Straße, retail visionary Andreas Murkudis confesses he snapped it up on an impulse simply ‘to save the last great space available’ in the city’s gentrified red-light district.
It was only afterwards that Murkudis, who has stores on this stretch at Nos. 81 and 77, realised that it was the perfect space for hosting events and exhibitions. Having already put the space to use by hosting shows by the artists Mitch Epstein, Lewis Balz and Olav Christopher Jenssen, the German-Greek retailer has now transformed No.98 into a showroom presented as an aspirational apartment.
‘What has now emerged naturally is the luxury of an open platform, the state of tabula rasa,’ he muses.
Called Andreas Murkudis 98, the store is a series of customised interior concepts that include living and working areas, and a kitchen and bathroom all expertly executed by the store’s interior design team who area on hand for consultations.
Each area is furnished with an extended selection of the pieces that can be found at Murkudis’s existing furniture store at Potsdamer Straße 77, as well as a few special surprises including the introduction of Dimo Chair – the first producer to take up the original furniture designs by Pierre Jeanneret, cousin of the architect Le Corbusier.
