Description

This high-density residential development was built as a so-called ‘garden estate’, as part of a social housing project. Additive rows of apartment blocks are set on sloping terrain, and acquire a green centre from a framing development on the periphery. Each building has a private area of green space. The special feature of this estate developed by architects Post and Welters is that identical basic elements, the ‘core houses’, were tied together in three variants, thus providing families of different sizes with individual living space. This produces usable area as needed from 76 to 114 m².

The following living units can be added to the core house as elements: a veranda storey as a roofed third base storey with main entrance, a top section as a second upper floor on part of the area and an extension axis in the form of a flat-roofed element added at the side at ground level especially for handicapped occupants. Ground plans based on the basic core can also be adapted to the occupants’ needs, so that spaces and functions can be allocated differently. These variations mean that the development varies in its appearance, but retains a sense of structural order despite the fact that the buildings are individual. The very simple basic figure of a cubic body with a clearly protruding, slightly sloping roof on one side is reminiscent of village architecture. But combination of elements, their strictly additive accumulation and intense colouring produce a clearly urban ensemble that seeks to combine the charm of village scale with a green space at the centre where the occupants can meet.

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Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.