Description

In an urban expansion area originally zoned for horizontal block developments, this typology is translated into the vertical: the result is a high-rise on an urban scale. The enclosed courtyard is transformed into an open communal garden at a height of 40 m, a framework for the ever-changing urban landscape. In deliberate contrast to the standard rows of identical apartment typologies, nine houses are stacked within each other in the Mirador complex, increasing density and each with their own apartment types. Connected by a complex, vertical and horizontal circulation and access sytem, they form a “super­block.”

Up to the 10th floor, the building features single-level front-to-back and corner units. The subsequent levels are reserved nearly exclusively for multistory (2 to 3 stories) maisonette apartments. In and of themselves, the floor plans are not the unique characteristic of this building, rather it is the combination of these plans and the manner in which apartments and access are interwoven, and the fact that they are always oriented toward the communal areas – the loggias inserted into the corner, the large courtyard “in the sky” at the center and the projecting stairwells. The central corridors leading to the maisonettes are also integrated into this complex spatial layout. On the 19th and 20th floors, they are part of an open, multi­story atrium across the entire length of the building. From the upper maisonettes, external stairs bisect the atrium to the private roof patios.

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Originally published in: Oliver Heckmann, Friederike Schneider (eds.), Floor Plan Manual Housing, fourth revised and expanded edition, Birkhäuser, 2011.