If you’ve ever strolled down Orani­en­straße in Kreuzberg this sum­mer, you’ll prob­ably have passed the KJOSK loc­a­tion at the corner of Manteuffel­straße. It’s quite inter­est­ing on first sight: an old pub­lic BVG bus, has been trans­formed into a col­or­ful Späti on once fal­low ground. Although it is more than just a Kiosk. It’s a hangout, really, in a beau­ti­ful envir­on­ment and a cre­at­ive touch.

All of the afor­men­tioned aspects some­how com­bine what I love about Ber­lin: Spätis, unused ground turned into some­thing pretty and use­ful, the bus and the seem­ing wilderness.

The Avant/Garde Diaries have recently pub­lished a por­trait on Ros­marie Köck­en­ber­ger who tells us the story behind the KJOSK and leads us to her friends from Balestra Ber­lin (you have prob­ably seen their light­room install­a­tions around in clubs).

From this point of view she intro­duces Balestra, a Ber­lin based agency. Not quit a an event nor a advert­ising agency, Ros­marie appre­ci­ates „the per­fect mix­ture of work­ing with friends, hav­ing fun and pro­fes­sional work which is the most import­ant part of a good col­lab­or­a­tion”. In a time when more and more people work long hours and have less time for friends and fam­ily Balestra tries to make room for exactly those ele­ments by incor­por­at­ing them in their work ethic.” This way of work­ing makes the agency so avant-garde and leads to suc­cess­ful pro­jects such as The Kubik, an out­door light and room install­a­tion and one of the most fam­ous pro­jects by Balestra.

This all really sums up what I appre­ci­ate about Ber­lins cre­at­ive com­munity which some­times resembles a con­fused spider­web: one per­son can lead you to the next pro­ject to the next per­son to the next part of your life, and you end up con­trib­ut­ing (in many good ways) to your neigh­bor­hood with a last­ing pos­it­ive aftertaste.

By the way: the video was pro­duced by our favor­ite DSLR boys Clem­ens, Nico and Björn. Keep it up!