An insight into Olafur Eliasson's utopian-sounding Berlin studio on Freunde von Freunden

In the month that saw artist Olafur Eliasson launch his solar phone charger, the artist is proving more than ever that he’s much more than the guy behind that sun installation in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall all those moons ago. He’s certainly an intriguing figure: a Denmark-born breakdancer-turned-artist, he’s made his base in Berlin (though he commutes in from Copenhagen) where he runs a vast studio that works as much as a hub of technology as of fine art.

A new piece on Freunde von Freunden offers a fascinating insight into this space, delving into the 5000 square metre building in Prenzlauer Berg that once held a brewery, and now indeed holds “shelved polyhedra, spotlights, coloured glass spheres and technical drawings,” all contributing towards his “Little Sun” solar products investigations.

Olafur has a huge team of 90 people working for him . “I could easily build up another 90 to it but I feel that that many people or maybe 300 in total would be pushing it too far,” he tells the site. “I feel very comfortable with 90 employees because it is an easily manageable number. I still know what everybody is doing, I see when people come in and go home and I can kind of intuitively run that number of people. I think once it comes to a 110 it becomes more abstract and I don’t know anymore what everybody is doing and when it comes to 200, it gets mad.”

The studio images show a space that’s as much a business as studio, albeit one with very wholesome ideologies. Everyone, including the artist, eat together four days a week in a kitchen Olafur says is “run like an art project” – so much so that he’s soon launching a cookbook published by Phaidon. But what does Olafur see as the key to a successful, near-hundred person studio? “We try to be respectful towards each other. I always say that we should celebrate that we disagree about a lot of things,” he tells FvF.

“We should treasure the fact that we are not necessarily here to help each other but we are here to make art. Sometimes when making art you have to make decisions that are not comfortable. A work of art sometimes means working for things you can’t measure. I try to inspire people and also show that I care a great deal about them. I hope that if I care about them that they occasionally care about me.”