Description

Access:

Entrance hall at the joint of the building connects the street and courtyard sides; interior stairwell; stairwells lit by windows.

Interior:

The apartments have open-plan layouts with views through from north to south, and most of the bathrooms and kitchens receive natural light and ventilation. A space for coats and a guest toilet or bath unit are followed by the living room, which extends to the open kitchen on the north side and into the loggia on the south end. Six of the apartments are maisonettes. The stairs between the floors are freestanding in the room. The bedrooms of the upper floor are grouped around a hall and have a small balcony, which looks down onto the loggia below as if into a front yard.

Exterior:

Loggias adjacent to the window along the full width of the apartment; the maisonette units have an individual room on the upper floor with a balcony; private roof terrace.

Morphology:

This residential and commercial building supplements a classic perimeter block construction and adopts the existing proportions of the neighboring building. On the street side, loggias and balconies of prefabricated concrete parts protrude form a glass shell. A lattice pattern formed with Aachener Blaustein (a type of limestone) and metal slats frame the loggias to make the units evident. Lattices of slats provide protected outdoor spaces, which function as transitional zones between the privacy of the apartment and the urban space. By analogy with the staggering on the street side, the glass volume of the apartments projects 1.5 m into the courtyard.

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Originally published in: Peter Ebner, Eva Herrmann, Roman Höllbacher, Markus Kuntscher, Ulrike Wietzorrek, Typology +: Innovative Residential Architecture, Birkhäuser, 2009.