Rising rents are endangering the basic character and atmosphere of Berlin. When empty inner-city plots are sold for maximum prices, urban life gets monetarised and thus loses the heterogeneity that earned this city worldwide acclaim. The local housing project Spreefeld, however, demonstrates a different strategy for producing new yet affordable apartments in a sought-after location right by the river Spree. By including public and semi-public facilities within its scheme it also offers a way of preserving and supporting much needed social diversity.
Three Berlin architecture offices teamed up for this recently completed co-op project: Silvia Carpaneto, fatkoehl and BARarchitects, with project management by a group called die Zusammenarbeiter. The development contains 44 apartments in three buildings dotted loosely over the site in order to provide as many apartments as possible with a direct view of the river.
Right from the beginning, the design process involved the future inhabitants, organised as a cooperative, who owned and managed the site and the buildings. This made the design process long and relatively complicated, yet it also led to very specific, non-standard solutions.
The final development features a heterogeneous range of apartment types (from 54 to 290 square metres) and also includes three huge “cluster apartments” for shared living (580 to 705 square metres). The Spreefeld project also offers an equally broad range of shared facilities, including communal gardens, terraces, sauna and fitness room. The ground floor contains additional “optional spaces” for which residents can suggest ideas that will be voted on by the co-op – so even after completion, the community will continue to decide about the communal use of their estate.
The co-operative project Spreefeld was initiated, programmed and managed by die Zusammenarbeiter – Gesellschaft von Architekten mbH. The three architecture offices involved were Silvia Carpaneto (leading architect), fatkoehl architects and BARarchitects. They are all based in Berlin.
spreefeldberlin.de
zusammenarbeiter.de
carpanetoschoeningh.de
fatkoehl.com
bararchitekten.de
This housing project shows that it is possible to build individual apartment types that the free market would never produce. At the same time it offers the luxury of communal facilities that the owners would not have been able to afford individually. And all this at a price way below Berlin’s current average cost for newly built apartments. I (fh)
Read more about Berlin’s co-op community builders in uncube’s interview with die Zusammenarbeiter member Christian Schöningh here.
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