For more than a century, the neo-Baroque brick complex on Kantstraße held women behind its arched windows and iron doors — a courthouse built in 1896, a prison attached to it, the whole weight of institutional authority pressed into dark red masonry. That the Wilmina Hotel emerged from this history in 2022 is less a renovation story than an act of transformation, carried out by Berlin practice Grüntuch Ernst Architekten over nearly a decade with the care and conviction the listed structure demanded. Armand Grüntuch and Almut Grüntuch-Ernst preserved original brick, wrought-iron railings, and cell-block galleries while threading 44 individually designed rooms through five levels around a full-height atrium, adding a glazed penthouse floor that sits lightly above the heavy Victorian masonry. The tension between confinement and release runs through every interior decision. Bedrooms are washed in pale linen whites, furnished with oak pieces and botanical prints that feel quietly restorative rather than performatively cheerful — the arched prison windows still present, now framing ivy-covered courtyard brick instead of a exercise yard. The lobby retains one of the original painted steel security doors, propped open beside a Danish lounge chair and a bird-of-paradise plant of almost theatrical scale. Downstairs, the restaurant fills a tall-ceilinged industrial volume, its raw brick walls animated by a constellation of pendant lights that hover like something between a chandelier and a thought. The project won both the German Sustainability Award for Architecture 2023 and the BDA Berlin Architecture Award — recognition that feels entirely earned.

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