Description

The clear, structure-giving form of a 110-meter-long double row is placed within a haphazardly developed residential area. A glass-roofed hall joins the two parallel north-south rows. It serves as a means of access and communal room.

The hall’s strong linearity is softened by the maisonettes’ entrance porches (first and second floor), their colored boxes pushing forwards at an angle into the corridor. The maisonettes’ entrances and bathrooms lie towards the passageway with all other rooms facing their own individual gardens. Two steps elevate and separate the living room from the kitchen (and, depending on the plan, an additional bedroom). The stairs have a high window towards the hall and lead up to further bedrooms and the bathroom.

The third-floor apartments are reached via slightly curved access galleries which cantilever into the hall and are linked by bridges at three points. These single-story apartments consist of a string of identical rooms, kitchen, living room or bedroom, and a zone of unspecified use in front facing the hall. This area is used as access to the rooms, but it is also broad enough for working or playing. The living room – not separated from the kitchen – can carry over into this zone to the corridor, and across to the garden via the balcony in the opposite direction. Also at the disposal of the residents, who have deliberately chosen a form of communal living, is a range of other rooms and workshops at each end of the row.

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