Description

In the Südstadt district of Hanover, a former school has been converted into a community-oriented housing project for 16 parties. The necessary alterations to effect the change of use were agreed in close collaboration with the City’s Conservation Department. The project now contains 16 residential units, three offices and a library for children and young adults.

The existing building comprised a three-storey classroom wing, a single-storey library and a sports hall grouped around a central playground. The conversion would have been difficult to realise as an investor-style speculative housing project because the rigid structure of the existing school building made it necessary to develop unconventional floor plans. The ability to involve the future residents in the community-oriented project made this possible. In the classroom wing, only one apartment corresponds to the size of an original classroom.

All other apartments occupy either one and a half or even two rooms, and in one case the apartment is arranged on two floors as a maisonette. The former sports hall was converted into four “terraced houses” next to each other, which extend over three levels from the basement to the roof, some with roof terraces. The former district library now contains barrier-free apartments. The school entrance has been retained and now serves as the way in to the library for children and young adults, its large window frontage opening onto the street.

The playground serves as a central element for the architectural concept of the project: all of the apartments open onto the courtyard, which is not subdivided by private terraces but made available for everyone to use. The atmosphere and ensemble of the former school is therefore still palpable while new elements, such as the yellow balconies projecting from the former classrooms, serve as a discreet indicator of the building’s new (residential) function.

The initial idea for converting the former school building into apartments came from the local citizens’ office for urban development. Potential partners from different backgrounds and age groups were sought who would be interested in taking part in a joint conversion project, including couples with and without children, single parents, students, older residents and people with disabilities. In a series of 60 meetings, residents were able to discuss and agree their needs and wishes with the architects and project management company. The involvement of the residents from the very early phases of the planning process helped them form a stronger sense of identity and community.

The conversion of the Südstadt-School into apartments is part of an ongoing urban development process in Hanover’s Südstadt district near to the city centre. Conversion measures are taking place throughout the entire urban area, which will upgrade the district’s image. While the majority of the Südstadt is either the typical block perimeter pattern from the Wilhelminian period or brick buildings from the 1920s, the project site was destroyed during the war. In the 1950s, the Südstadt- School was erected on the site to a design by Friedrich Lindau and in 1990 was accorded the status of a listed building as an archetypal example of 1950s architecture. After the school was vacated by the then school for the blind and partially sighted in 2007, the City of Hanover put the building up for sale with the condition that a new project would need to incorporate the library for children and young adults and that the building substance be retained. The local citizens’ office approached the architects and project management company directly with a request to submit a bid for the school conversion, as both had prior expertise in the development of community-oriented projects.

The school was vacated in 2005. The project initiative began with a preliminary design and submission of a bid to purchase the building, which took place in early 2010. The group then formed and the participatory planning process began. Construction works began at the end of 2010 and were completed in 2012.

Privately financed, in some cases with low-interest loans from the KfW Bank Group. The calculation of thermal bridges was additionally funded by the “Proklima” climate protection fund. Additional tax credits were provided for retaining the listed building (in contrast to a “normal” building for personal use).

---

Originally published in: Annette Becker, Laura Kienbaum, Kristien Ring, Peter Cachola Schmal, Bauen und Wohnen in Gemeinschaft / Building and Living in Communities, Birkhäuser, 2015.