Description

The Conjunto Residential Tower, with 78 two- to four-room apartments of 38 to 91 m², was developed by Oscar Niemeyer as part of the 1957 International Building Exhibition Berlin (IBA 57), an exhibition located in the mostly destroyed Hansaviertel in central Berlin. The reconstruction of the district was intended to signify a new beginning for architecture and the urban landscape.[1] The development included concepts for modern shared family life, with entrance areas, kitchens, and bathrooms kept small and functional in favor of larger actual living spaces.[2] The eight-story Conjunto Residential Tower is supported by two rows of six double buttresses, called pilotis. This architectural air floor — and indeed the entire development — is a reference to Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation. Only the fifth and eighth floors can be reached by elevator; all other upper floors are accessed via an internal staircase.[3] Niemeyer’s and Le Corbusier’s deliberations on this type of collective circulation area go back to the collective housing of the Russian avant-garde. Shared necessities like rues intérieures, arcades, and rooftop terraces were employed to combine and connect private apartments with collective spaces, much like the streets and squares of a city.[4]

However, too little attention was paid to the design of the community- promoting access areas of the Conjunto Residential Tower, with windowless and cramped staircases that seem rather unfriendly and triste. Oscar Niemeyer incorporated an open story into this same circulation area, similar to a distributor floor, to be used as collective space. This open story provided the name of the project: in Brazil, conjunto refers to an open floor, and translated literally it means a collection, connection, or combination. The west face of the fifth floor was therefore open, with apartments arranged along the east side. The open floor was well-situated and could be accessed by all residents and from three different stories.

Despite these structural inducements, community life never developed.[5] One reason was the lack of furniture, as the administration had the furnishings removed at the conclusion of the building exhibition. Thus, although a half-story was open for collective use, the function of this undefined space remained unclear; the residents never came to view the undefined empty space as an extension of their personal living space and therefore never appropriated it. At the turn of the millennium, the apartments in the Conjunto Residential Tower were converted into condominiums. According to statements by the Hansaviertel Resident Association, the half-story of open space still remains unused.[6]

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Originally published in: Susanne Schmid, Dietmar Eberle, Margrit Hugentobler (eds.), A History of Collective Living. Forms of Shared Housing, Birkhäuser, 2019. Translation by Word Up!, LLC, edited for Building Types Online.