Several blocks from the train station in the Hamburg district of Altona, Grosse Bergstrasse was once a thriving shopping strip, the kind of place families went on the weekends to make purchases at department stores.

Not anymore. Today the streets are mostly quiet, and the collection of businesses is reduced to deep-discount clearance warehouses, kebab shops, and more than a few vacant buildings.

It's in one of these that Claere Kaspar is hard at work, cutting fabric following her own clothing designs, listening to a highbrow radio program to pass the time. All the while, she's in a shop window.

One of the walls to Kaspar's studio was, up until 2003, a display window for a Karstadt department store.

The retail giant Karstadt is among the biggest casualties of Germany's economic downturn thus far, and it could go out of business soon.

Karstadt department stores anchor many a downtown shopping district in Germany and the prospect of scores of multi-storey retail spaces across the nation lying empty has some cities worried.

Hamburg's artists, however, have been energized.

Going into business

Since April, Kaspar and the group she helps lead - a collective of more than 100 artists - have begun repurposing the space into studios.

“This huge hall is also used for concerts and parties," she said, pointing toward the meters and meters of empty space through the main doors. "The whole building was a huge shopping center. Karstadt was only one of many shops.”

The building had featured a number of smaller businesses, including a jeweler, a travel agent, and several floors that, through the 1970s and 80s, housed a job center for area residents. The varying spaces - from former office suites to wide open retail floor - offer a lot of flexibility.

Among those attracted by the space were Janine Eckart and Philipp Ricklefs. They're a sculpting duo that constructs artworks made of very large interlocking geometric shapes.

“Right now we are preparing for an exhibition we have at the end of August,” said Eckert, holding up the model for the sculpture. It fits easily in her two hands, but she said the finished version will be nearly three meters (10 feet) high.

Because a work like that can't be put together just anywhere, the artists they just got lucky, they said, finding the big ground-floor space within a few months of finishing art school.

The right price

The hallways on the next three floors are stripped bare of adornment, the floors poured concrete. It's clearly a work in progress - and has been since April, when a number of artists banded together to form the Frappant Verein, the association that signed a temporary occupancy contract with the building's manager.

They've been working on an almost daily basis to get the studios in shape. That has meant cleaning up the dust and dirt that accumulates from years of vacancy, and making sure the electricity and water are in good order.

The participants have put in a lot of hard work, but in exchange they have a place to produce their art - for just a pittance. Most of the studios in the building can be had for about 75 euros ($108) a month.

Just getting over the financial hurdles involved in life as a working artist in Germany is an important first step to success, said Julian Neville, another Frappant artist.

“It's my first experience with a studio, with the space all to myself," said the half-American filmmaker, adding that he feels lucky to have found a studio at all, even if it is a bit rustic.

“The first thing I noticed was that it smelled of old carpet," recalled Neville. “So, like most people here I got rid of the carpet and painted the floor. The smell went away and the space got a little bit brighter.”

Idea factory

Neville said he's looking forward to the exchange of ideas, the creative cross-pollination that comes with so many artists working in one place. It's a situation he hasn't experienced since being in art school.

The Frappant project is already beginning to bear fruit. Twenty of the building's artists presented a show in early August, inviting the public into the building to see their new work - some of which was inspired by the building itself.

Claere Kaspar, for example, created clothing made from patterns copied from the old Karstadt's architectural drawings and blueprints she found lying around in an upper floor.

Kaspar said she hopes her group's project of reclaiming an old department store for art won't be the last. After years of decline, ailing department store chain Karstadt looks ready to die off, meaning more than 80 branches could be emptied out in the coming years.

“It's such a big chance,” says Kaspar. “Just put the rents really low and then give it to artists, or to freelancers, or to musicians, or whatever. Then in every part of the city where you had a Karstadt you could have self-organized, free spots that were naturally connected to each other. That could be really nice!”

But convincing landlords to part with the potential income that all that prime downtown real estate represents is one hurdle that lies ahead.

Author: Matt Hermann

Editor: Kate Bowen