SPECULATING ON THE VOID

Parasite Intervention, 2024, Ku’damm Berlin. Collaboration with Arnaud Lemonnier.

CONTEXT: Unused properties driven by speculation are an increasing issue in Berlin, caused by falling property prices, high interest rates, and rising construction costs. Investors hold off for bigger profits, leaving construction sites unfinished and properties unused, while the city faces a shortage of housing and usable spaces.

TEXT: “Speculating on the Void” is a new project by Parasite Real Estate, a fictitious real estate company focused on vacant properties. The project explores alternative uses for vacant lots and buildings. Parasite Real Estate employees Jakob Wirth and Arnaud Lemonnier “test drive” these spaces, experimenting with potential future functions.

This summer, they worked in the 48 000m2 unfinished P1 building across from KaDeWe, left incomplete by the bankrupt company Signa. Over the course of a week, Jakob moved in with their private room, while Arnaud set up his office. Together, they explored the building’s imaginative potential, reaffirming its concrete value —a fragment of reality within a speculative void.

They refer to these unfinished spaces as “Monuments of Speculation,” symbols of failed real estate ventures in high-priced areas. Thereby this place is a non-place: legally uncertain and functionally void—an anomaly in the capitalist city, offering endless possibilities for reimagination.

„Speculating on the Void“ encourages a reconsideration of speculation by inviting us to imagine new uses for abandoned buildings. It challenges the primacy of capital, prioritizing personal and collective use over profit, and questions the concept of private property itself.

Press: taz, Thüringer Allgemeine Zeitung, The Local