Fantastic Frank

"Celeste Asfour is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary designer with a background in architecture. Working across interiors, objects, and spatial design, her practice is driven by a deep interest in materials, craftsmanship, and the character of existing spaces. Her recently completed Strom Café in Berlin reflects this approach, combining historic traces with contemporary interventions to create a space that feels both timeless and distinctly rooted in its surroundings.

Dear Celeste, thank you for taking a moment for this conversation. Let’s start at the core: how do you describe your approach to design?

The context defines the initial thought process. Sometimes that might be an odd, overlooked element that I can draw out, rather than disguise. Sometimes it’s an old structure that others might want to conceal. The language of the existing and the resulting respect for it define anything that follows. From there on, it’s about the people who will inhabit or pass through the space and how they will appropriate it and make it their own. As a designer, you can create a space for dialogue between them and their surroundings, both momentary and lived-in. Materials come next: What can be found on site? How can I combine this with materials rooted in craft and contrast? I always feel the need to balance it out - something old set against something new. And finally, light. I think every architect uses that as a sense of “source of truth”. It makes everything come alive.

Your dream house or apartment (or other item) to design? Or maybe you already did?

A Silo. Surely everybody’s dream, to take a space of abandonment and fully refunction it. There is something about stripping something off its original purpose and reimagining it entirely from the inside out. No matter to what extent, this should be practiced more also inside our cities. To create more inhabitable space.

Your current favorite restaurant (in Berlin or somewhere else in the world)?

An impossible question for someone whose life consists of going out to eat. In Berlin’s surroundings that will have to be Parg in Gerswalde. They grow most of their own produce. Inside Berlin, my all-time favorite is probably Otto. Beyond Berlin: Tempura Matsu in Kyoto, without question, the single best meal of my life.

Your favorite app?

It’s Google Maps. I travel a lot, and take my prep research very seriously, cross-referencing guidebooks and blog posts to create the best Maps-Lists for all the cities and countries I go to. So now I’m a full-on List Trader among my friends, sharing restaurants, cafés, museums and architectural spots with them before any trip. Beyond that: Kleinanzeigen and Vinted. Hunting rare antiques and vintage pieces both for my home and my wardrobe. My life is an ongoing archive project.

Your favorite building in Europe?

Torres Blancas in Madrid holds a particular obsession for me. I haven’t made it inside yet, only as far as the entrance, where I ended up sneaking around before getting kicked out. La Congiunta in Switzerland is another one that really left a mark on me. As is Aldo Rossi’s Monte Amiata in Milan. But truthfully, there are so many, especially modernist buildings, that I love exploring as they let me enter a different world entirely, every time.

Your one piece of furniture you take with you on every move?

Only recently have I started collecting special pieces of furniture together with my partner, so they have not yet moved with me. One that will stick by our side forever is the Celestia Lamp by Afra & Tobia Scarpa, which we picked up on a market in Italy a few years ago. What I’ve kept the longest and what has moved with me everywhere is a small drawing by the surrealist artist Ana Bagayan, given to me for my sixteenth birthday. There is something eerie and strange about it, and it always pulls me back to my childhood self whenever I look at it.

Thank you Celeste, for the conversation and for sharing your way of thinking. Your work adds a thoughtful and lasting layer to architecture in Berlin."