Gropius: What about Marcus Fuhrmann’s mega project?

Patrick Lebeck

If you want to go to the Gropyus office in southern Berlin, you must first cross a busy street. The startup has rented an old factory in Tempelhof, far from the Berlin dead zone. Prices vary here, too: coffee is available in black at the bakery for 1.80 euros instead of oat milk foam for 4.30 euros in the jazz bastion of Torstrasse.

Founder Markus Fuhrmann welcomes you at the entrance. He’s been in Berlin for a few days now. He already lives in Switzerland and commutes between Berlin, Austria and Liechtenstein – his startup has corporate headquarters in all three countries. Most of Gropyus’ 300 employees are now based in Germany.

Prefab houses, but in the “cool” and sustainable

Fuhrmann has big plans with Gropyus: he wants to digitize living and thus make it more sustainable. A startup isn’t supposed to be a construction company, but a technology company: “We don’t do projects, we make products,” Forman says. Products are manufactured sequentially, smart apartments. Not without reason the company is named after architect and pioneer of prefab homes Walter Gropius. prefab houses should be “fantastic”; Fuhrmann does not want to sell apartment blocks to end customers, but to real estate companies, for example.