Proposal for dwellings that are to bring cohesion to a part of Berlin that suffered heavy bombing during the war and was never rebuilt.

After the Wall fell in 1989, artists and squatters moved into one of the surviving buildings of the former Friedrichsstadtpassagen department store which had been largely destroyed during the war. They turned it into a place for art, music and entertainment that became widely known under its new name of Tacheles. The insertion of dwellings in the remaining empty spaces of Tacheles raises two issues. First of all, there is the relationship between old and new. An intervention is required that can transform a broken-down fragment of urban tissue (a bombed-out city block) into a cohesive urban ensemble. Second, there is the dynamic society of East Berlin with its emerging subcultures and the creative class. The challenge is how to deploy this social potential in a way that measures up to today's lifestyle in Berlin.

The solution to the first issue resides in the Russian Constructivists' theory of the Social Condenser. This entails programmatic layering on vacant terrain to encourage encounter and interaction between disparate groups, resulting in unexpected occurrences. This idea is rendered as a dynamic spatial gesture that fosters a new balance between old and new. It is through the contrast between old and new that this intervention connects Tacheles to the surrounding city.

For the second issue, we carried out research into ways flexibility can provide a collective ambience in housing blocks. From there we drew up an urban plan with buildings containing two flexible dwelling types. A new underground rail station connecting two existing lines is to attract other groups of people. A 300-metre-long row of temporary dwellings and a high-rise complex are to act as landmarks anchoring the site firmly in the urban context.

The low-rise units are arranged and graded in terms of public and private. The most flexible and public dwelling type occupies the ground floor, with the enclosed and private type upstairs. Contextually, the buildings exhibit a comparable grading from public to private by way of the street channels that narrow in areas of a more private nature.

The buildings' flexibility combined with an integrated climate control system is additionally a sustainable response. The more flexible the space, the longer the building's useful life. This is supplemented with maximum natural lighting in the dwellings, reuse of rainwater from the roof and the street, and a heat pump unit in combination with concrete core activation.

Place of education: TU Delft | Specialization: architecture | Tutors: Jasper van Zwol, Ype Cuperus