Description

The driving forces behind the 1973 Steilshoop Living Model in Hamburg were architect Rolf Spille together with the Urban Living Association (Verein Urbanes Wohnen), founded to initiate a process for changing living culture.[1] The Steilshoop Living Model was geared towards emancipating its residents, who were offered the opportunity to determine how they wanted to live by participating in the planning phase. Collective living was considered to be an experiment aimed at providing an alternative to family life in order to solve personal and family difficulties. Although the majority of the population consisted of young working academics and non-working but well-educated wives who had an average of two children, there was a deliberate effort to encourage a social mix of different milieus.[2] Working-class families, large families, migrants, students, and even former prisoners and families with special needs also participated in the Steilshoop Living Model.

The collective living spaces and private apartments were not designed based on any historical model. Future residents met weekly in their still conventional apartments to jointly explore their housing wishes and requirements. The next step was the formation of working groups to address such issues as playgrounds and youth work, neighborhood building, residents’ meeting planning, and managing shared facilities. Other groups worked out the contractual basis of living together or developed floor plan layouts for the apartments.[3]

The fact that residents got to know each other long before moving in created intense social interaction in the beginning. The Steilshoop Living Model was met with considerable political support and received public funding.[4] In order to compensate for the collective areas, private outdoor spaces such as balconies were not built. The top floor, however, did include a spacious terrace with a meeting room and tea kitchen. A kindergarten, playrooms for children, a room for schoolwork, a workshop, sports rooms, and a communal laundry room were located on the ground floor.[5] For the more than 220 residents, the selfplanned apartments remained the center of collective living. The participatory planning process resulted in various individual apartments that were attached to communal kitchens and collective spaces, as well as apartments that could be considered traditional family units. The largest unit was 400 m² and provided space for six families.

After just over 11 years of operation, however, all residential units were converted back into conventional apartments.[6] The resident population changed early, in the course of the first few years, with financially better-situated inhabitants leaving the Steilshoop. This resulted in a mixture that included an above-average number of students and problematic families. The collective areas became undermanaged, soon appearing worn and neglected. Additionally, it became apparent that the configuration of the collective areas did not encourage communication. Despite the existence of apartments with collective kitchens, living, and dining areas, the units were spatially too isolated from each other to consolidate the community of the seven-story residential building. The spaces shared by the entire building community were separated on the roof and ground floor; as a result the collective use lost its natural and spontaneous character.[7]

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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.