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About
GlogauAIR is a non-profit art space and artist residency in Berlin Kreuzberg, founded in 2006 by the artist Chema Alvargonzalez and now sustained by La Memoria Artistica Chema Alvargonzalez, an organisation continuing his legacy. The residency's name combines Glogauer Strasse, the street on which it sits, with its purpose as an Artist in Residence programme, one conceived to help artists develop their own creative journey within Berlin, a city long regarded as a pioneering hub for contemporary global culture. In 2026, the institution marked its twentieth anniversary, a milestone honoured through a memorial exhibition dedicated to its founder.
GlogauAIR occupies a historic, modernist style building originally designed as a school, one of the first projects completed by architect Ludwig Hoffmann in 1896, during his tenure as Berlin's Building Adviser, a role that would go on to shape many of the city's most significant public buildings, parks, bridges and museums, among them the Pergamon Museum and the Berlin Town Hall. The school's principal building was destroyed during Allied bombing in 1945, though its gymnasium survived and today houses a public children's library, while the former rector's building, itself a listed heritage structure, preserves the site's educational spirit as GlogauAIR's residency today. The former classrooms have been converted into thirteen studios distributed across the upper floors, complemented by a ground floor exhibition and events space known as the Project Space, alongside a garden and courtyard shaped from what was once the ruined portion of the school.
The institution's contemporary importance rests on its dual residency model, built around the principles of exploring, creating and exhibiting. Its on-site programme houses international artists across all disciplines, offering curatorial and technical support alongside a shared professional and social environment, while its on-line programme, developed in response to the challenges of 2020, extends the same curatorial support, group meetings, expert talks and workshops to artists working from their own studios anywhere in the world.
Curatorially, GlogauAIR maintains an active dialogue between its resident artists and the surrounding city through its Berlin Guest initiative, regularly inviting local artists, collectives, galleries, institutions and curators to exhibit within the Project Space, alongside a continuous programme of showcases, interviews and open studio events that make the residency's ongoing work visible to the public.
The institution's core organisational pillars are its on-site and on-line residency programmes, its Project Space exhibition activity, and its surrounding community platforms supporting alumni and current artists. Operating as GlogauAIR gGmbH, a non-profit structure, the residency is sustained through a combination of artist fees, partnerships, and the continued support of La Memoria Artistica Chema Alvargonzalez, allowing it to preserve the founding spirit of openness and receptivity to new ideas within Kreuzberg's long standing creative and multicultural community.
