CAMA A . photos: © HIEPLER, BRUNIER
New build apartment block with underground car park. Compaction of a not quite typical Berlin block.
In view of the increasing housing shortage and rising rents, the question of how more living space can be developed in Berlin is pressing. Our new six-storey building, constructed on around 240 square metres of a garden plot in Charlottenburg’s Fasanenstrasse, has created around 1,100 square metres of new living space in the heart of the city.
The solid construction was added to an existing firewall. Large windows and balconies open up the house to a park-like garden plot. The light, grey-green plaster of the façade on the upper floors, the iron mica green metal railings and window frames and the exposed concrete on the ground floor correspond calmly with the surrounding green of the trees and the brick-coloured historic exposed brickwork firewall of the neighbouring building.
Together with the large windows, these elements create a friendly, light atmosphere that can also be felt inside the 15 flats and the large loft-like penthouse flat with terrace and views over the rooftops. We deliberately contrasted the raw charm of the load-bearing concrete walls and ceilings with the finely levelled, lightweight partition walls. Together with the fitted kitchens and the floor-to-ceiling doors, these look like set-in furniture and offer the residents plenty of opportunities to organise their living spaces here.
Together with the new building, the existing front building was renovated and adapted to the colour scheme of the new building. The two buildings thus form an ensemble connected by the firewall.
Fasanenstraße is a street almost two kilometres long in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district. Fasanenstraße has borne its current name since 1901 in memory of a pheasantry laid out by King Frederick II in 1755 at the end of the current thoroughfare. A special feature of Fasanenstraße are the villas and town houses, some of which are still preserved today, which – such as the Literaturhaus and Villa Grisebach – stand out from the otherwise typical Berlin block structure. This type of development, which seems atypical for Berlin’s city centre today, was also found on the property at Fasanenstraße 36 at the time.
After the original building on the street side was destroyed by war damage, a postmodern apartment block was built here in the 1980s, which, contrary to the previous building typology, now closes the edge of the block at this point. In accordance with the 1958/60 land-use plan, which is still valid today, the garden plot behind it in the centre of the block was initially not densified any further and only an underground car park was built on.
In line with the increasingly desired redensification of the West Berlin block structure, we were commissioned by the owner to develop the idea of building a new, multi-storey residential building on the garden plot and were ultimately able to convince the city planning office of the project. One of the biggest challenges was the difficult development of the building plot. The existing front building had (and still has) no access to the property, only underground access to the underground car park. Therefore, both the demolition of the old underground car park and the logistics for the entire new building had to be organised above and below the front building.
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