Berlin 2009 - Wingender Hovenier Architecten

Apartment Building Luisenplatz, Berlin, 1983-1987
Hans Kollhoff
Two linear and staggered volumes,
separated by Eosanderstrasse,
reconstruct the spatial edge of the two
blocks between Spree and Otto-Suhr-
Allee, oriented toward Luisenplatz. On
the one hand this serves to cover up a
substantial firewall, and on the other,
through the insertion of the lines of
the eaves and the turning back of the
corners, to knit the blocks into a
homogeneous unit. This gives the
apartments a favorable east-west
orientation with a view of the
Luisenplatz, castle and garden,
accentuated by a large conservatory
that dominates the entire project. This
last serves to mediate between the
private character of the apartment
building and the public one of Luisenplatz
and the castle.
Ever since the construction of housing
projects in the twenties, housing
development has turned its back on
the city. The symbolic character of such
an attitude was legitimated by Bruno
Taut’s horseshoe: located at a sufficient
distance from the unimproveable
canter and introverted, with a pool and
small gardens facing onto the city and
rigorously closed on the side of the
street. So modernity has made only a
marginal contribution to urban housing
of Berlin, with the major exception of
Erich Mendelsohn’s Cicerostrasse. The
apartment building on Luisenplatz
represents an attempt to see housing
not in terms of the creation of residential
enclaves (Siedlungen) but in those
of urban development. It appears as
a solid cube of bricks whose baseline
marks a precise edge with the public
space. Stores are set on the short sides,
and the apartments on the ground floor
are arranged like small two-story
houses with a separate entrance and
their own street number. The scale is
urban. The miniaturizing effect,
apparent in the contrast between
today’s highrise residential buildings
and the context dating from the years
of the industrial revolution, is
attenuated by the “large window” of
the four-story-high conservatory, which
together with the broad sweep of the
roof embraces Luisenplatz.
The exemplary character of the housing
complex is also based on the
morphology of the plans, which stems
from the reference of the narrow
conservatory to the whole width of the
apartment. The conservatory acts as
a thermal buffer, allowing people to
spend time “in the open” in front of the
apartment during the months of
transition. It is exploited as an additional
area in various ways and increasingly
seen by the inhabitants as a
possibility for self-representation.