Description

The long house (225 m long), six individual houses and a building with kindergarten and daycare are conceived to give the former industrial site a new urban identity. The great variety of apartment types from studios on the ground floor to loft apartments and various duplex types is geared toward appealing to a wide range of potential residents, creating a sense of urban community.

On the standard floors of the long house, the apartments are rotated away from the axis, dynamically oriented toward the exterior with balconies on both sides. This rotation results in a cruciform layout, which lends itself to a variety of floor plans.

In one variation, three equally sized rooms form a sequence across the depth of the units: the bedrooms on the facade side open onto the balcony at right angles, while the open room at the center functions as interface and intersection. The longitudinal sides of this space adjoin the bathrooms and stairwell and, with a set-back, lead into two additional rooms, which open onto the balconies on the far side. This results in a diagonal layout to the open, loft-like living room with the bedrooms at the end.

In another variation, the rooms create a front-to-back continuous space followed by a series of bedrooms alongside corridors with a similar set-back and cruciform room disposition as above. All living areas are open from balcony to balcony, generously oriented toward the environment. The two crested attic stories accommodate apartments and large maisonettes with front-to-back roof patios.

The single-floor and duplex units in the individual houses are open on three sides with loggias at the corners.

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