Description

In response to the shortage of affordable housing in Munich, the city council launched “Housing for All”, a short-term housing programme that began in 2016. Florian Nagler Architects together with the GEWOFAG housing association built the first project: 100 small apartments for refugees and homeless people.

For the 4,200 m² site, Nagler designed a 110 m long, 12 m deep, four-storey timber hybrid building with south-facing gallery walkways for access. The building is raised above ground allowing the ground floor to be used as car parking, which was its original use. 107 of the original 111 parking spaces have been retained by arranging the spaces at an angle. The arrangement of the parking spaces determined the building grid with three parking spaces between each set of columns. Within each section of the column grid are three apartments, two wider with a smaller apartment in between. The central apartment steps back on the east side creating a small entrance area on the gallery for the group of three apartments. Other communal spaces include a community space at the southern end of the block, a café-launderette and the roof deck.

The building is predominantly a timber construction. Only the ground floor, stairs and gallery walkways were made of concrete, the base in the form of a “table” of in-situ cast reinforced concrete columns covered by a slab of precast elements with in-situ deck layer, and the stairs and gallery walkways of precast reinforced concrete elements. The combination provided the required F90 level of fire protection and also took the greater part of the overall construction time to build: two and a half months. The material surfaces are also the construction elements: the stairs are precast concrete, the steel balustrades are galvanised, the timber ceiling in the apartments mostly exposed and the façade made of individually-replaceable Eternit panels.

Structurally, the project can be seen as a kind of reinterpretation of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation. Only the stairs and the two end sections (for heating, storage, bicycles and rubbish bins) actually touch the ground. The building is something of a novelty in Munich in that it is built on land that has already been used rather than requiring a vacant plot, a solution of particular interest for cities and conurbations where vacant land is scarce. This was, however, only possible because the car parking was not subject to the usual building regulations: here 0.2 spaces per dwelling were required instead of the usual 1 per unit. This concept of building over existing facilities therefore functions best in already densely-developed areas, but that is also where resistance from local residents is highest. On one side of the building is the Dantebad, a heated open-air swimming pool, from which the building has its name, and on the other side is the “SC Freundschaft” SC Amicitia 1919 München e.V. football club. Behind them lie the predominantly residential districts of Moosach and Neuhausen-Nymphenburg. After protests from local citizens, the housing association altered the concept from 100 one-room apartments to 14 two-and-a-half room apartments for families with 50% of the residents for refugees and 40% of the apartments for women only. This helped considerably to ease the situation and now the football club, which initially feared “disruptions to club activities” and “an out-of-control social hotspot”, has become involved in activities to help integrate refugees.

Originally published in Bauwelt 10.2017, pp. 28-33, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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