Berlin 2009 - Wingender Hovenier Architecten

Residential Park Malchower Weg, Berlin, 1993-1994
Hans Kollhoff
The group of apartment blocks on
Malchower Weg was built in the boom
period just after the fall of the Berlin
Wall as one of the first new residential
areas in the eastern part of the city. The
complex was a clear statement by the
architects of the need to increase the
density of areas that were already
developed in order to prevent urban
sprawl from eating into the land
surrounding the city. It was, however,
also an attempt to inject urban
refinement into an area lacking any
coherence in its urban design, an area
that was characterised by the aesthetics
of a rough prefabricated concrete slab
housing estate, by small houses and
weekend houses and an overall lack
of urban design rules. On the almost
square 12,000 square metres site at the
junction of Malchower Weg and
Drossener Strasse a total of 128
apartments were built as part of a
publicly-funded housing programme.
They are divided into 16 essentially
identical four-storey buildings which are
arranged in two groups of eight around
long communal gardens and define
clear »urban« edges along the streets.
The open arrangement of the buildings
takes its cue from the existing detached
houses in the area but, with its compact
geometry and building density, also
clearly signals its urban intention. On a
clearly defined piece of land, different
ways of combining a single type of
building have created an astonishing
variety of ways of experiencing urban
space: density and distance, alleys and
streets, perspective views outwards and
perspectives which contain the view
within the garden courtyards. Despite
extensive glazing, the buildings look
solid and elemental. They have a
classical structure with their horizontal
articulation created by the stone plinth
band on the ground floor as well as the
glass ribbon of windows at attic level
with the broad roof overhangs above.
The facades are of conventional fairfaced
brickwork - articulated vertically
by brick shafts and horizontally by the
concrete lintels in front of the storey
slabs - which also makes the structural
cross-wall system visible. The shallowpitched
zinc sheet roofs, with their dark
stained wooden soffits, cantilever far
over the facade and give the buildings
an aura of security.
The natural materials chosen for the
facades require little maintenance:
dark fired, blue-red Wittmund glazed
brick, natural wood windows, grey-green
Westphalian sandstone for the window
sills. The horizontal cornice consoles
are made of dyed concrete, to which
ground Dolomite has been added to
give it the same colouring as the window
sills.