Grüntuch Ernst Architekten

Housing Development . Berlin

Grüntuch Ernst Architekten . photos: © Jan Bitter . + baunetz

This new housing ensemble is based on a concept of urban residence at the heart of the capital. The development is in the form of a semi-public park flanked on three sides by five- to seven-storey housing tracts and open to the street on the fourth side.

The park thus forms a point of identification for the residents, while serving as a neighbourhood garden during the day.

An important aspect was the creation of dwellings of many different sizes and layouts that allow a wide range of individual living forms for 300 to 400 residents as well as a combination of habitation and work. The housing types range from single-room studios, maisonettes and penthouse flats to units that have a lot in common with an urban villa.
There are roughly 130 dwelling units, all of which possess loggias, roof terraces or their own gardens. Two seven-storey gateway blocks form the entrance to the complex. They contain only single-storey flats, with commercial areas on the ground floor. This diversity and mixture of types is legible externally, and the animated facades help to obviate any sense of massiveness in the complex. There are three different facade types. The courtyard is distinguished by a white rendered finish alternating with a post-and-rail construction that bears an outer trellis for plants. In contrast, the gateway blocks have perfor-ated, brown anodized-metal facades, consisting of storey-height sliding, folding shutters.