Description

The five-story apartment building along the road has a supporting structure composed of crosswalls and columns, which provides a division for the dwellings. According to their size they take up one, two, or three sections, whereby one section corresponds to the width of a room. Studios and lofts are available as variations on the apartments.

Each stairwell has a lift and a generously proportioned entrance area (with a communal room!), and leads to two dwelling units per story. As a rule, a 3½- and 4½-room flat are located next to each other, each taking up 2 or 3 sections respectively. The former makes use of the width of the stairwell as an “additional” room. The design also allows freedom of choice within each flat. Walls can be placed in any of a number of pre­determined locations: at the expense of the living room, for example, the kitchen can be extended to become a dwelling kitchen, and the walls separating the bedrooms can be placed in a space-defining manner. But the uniform kitchen/bathroom unit next to the entrance complete with bath, WC, and réduit remains fixed.

All rooms can be reached directly from the large corridor. The bedrooms face the courtyard, the main rooms the road. Apart from the kitchen, all rooms have access to balconies – even the bathroom. This makes the flat seem very open. On the ground floor commercial use units alternate with 3-room apartments with private front gardens facing the street. A roofed area for locking up bicycles shields the back of the communal garden from the paved inner yard. The communal roof terrace affords a magnificent view of nearby Alsace.

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Originally published in: Oliver Heckmann, Friederike Schneider (eds.), Floor Plan Manual Housing, fourth revised and expanded edition, Birkhäuser, 2011.