Residential development with daycare centre at Nusselstraße

The site is located at the entrance to the quarter on Paul-Gerhardt-Allee. It is opposite the town square, which is the central public space of the new quarter with shopping facilities and a primary school. The development logically envisages a mixed use of subsidised housing, a day-care centre and a neighbourhood meeting place with a café.

For the heterogeneous situation at the entrance to the neighbourhood, we propose an ensemble of three buildings that form very different spaces. These open spaces link the development with the surroundings in a variety of ways, and the broken-up development also mediates between the finer grain of the surroundings and the clear courtyard structure of the new quarter. The structure forms a rather closed courtyard for residential use. A passage from north to south leads to a small forecourt from which the day care centre is accessed. The slightly polygonal bodies relate to the high point at the entrance square and create a differentiated spatial structure. In this way, the development on Nusselstraße becomes an important player at the entrance to the neighbourhood.

Different conditions on the outer sides of the perimeter lead to different typological developments and ground floor zones. The ground floor of the main building to the north facing the square houses the children's, family and neighbourhood meeting places. The meeting places extend over the entire ground floor and are directly accessible from the main street. A generous passageway to the courtyard allows views into the courtyard; on the north side, this creates a clear plus in terms of spatial relationships and urban quality of stay.

To the west, the building bends away, creating a connection to the neighbourhood square and improving the lighting for the flats. The open space in the west is used by the café of the meeting place. The upper floors of the building contain flats. To the south, facing the passage, is the building of the day-care centre. The public character of the cross connection through the site also allows the day care centre to become part of the urban situation at the entrance. The rooms of the day care centre extend over three floors, while the two upper floors are used for living. In this way, the different uses are clearly assigned to buildings but always mixed with housing, creating truly urban houses. The third building block in the east is a purely residential building, with one mezzanine floor.

All the residential buildings are accessed from the outside. The houses are generally organised as triples or quads. Due to the building's position, a (sound-)protected courtyard area is formed to which people live. The dwellings in the most sound-polluted locations in the north are usually planned as through types. Since the building will be constructed to a very high energy-efficiency standard and will therefore have controlled residential ventilation, common rooms can also be oriented towards the street. The north façade, which is very important in this public square situation, is thus enlivened and receives larger windows and also activities.

The buildings will have a high-quality double-skin façade: mainly a clinker brick facing in a strong blue-violet, with some coloured precast concrete elements on the ground floor. The base of the ensemble changes its appearance depending on the context. In the north, west and partly in the east, facing the public street spaces, there is a façade of coloured exposed concrete from the ground floor to the first floor with large openings for the communal facilities. At the base in the south and in the east, facing the less busy streets, the coloured concrete is higher but no longer storey-high. In the private courtyard there is a brick plinth that differs from the rising wall by a different joint colour. The building structure of the day-care centre also receives larger, storey-high areas of coloured reinforced concrete at the entrance area, and there is also a bench and a canopy. The remaining elevations are only set off with a very thin band of concrete.

The darker tone of the brick contrasts well with the new lighter buildings in the surrounding area. The site gets its own identity and forms a new interesting façade variation in the neighbourhood. The entrances to the residential buildings are clearly marked by clinker bricks reaching down to the base and are easy to find. The façade is structured across the storeys with slight recesses at the parapet areas and coloured precast concrete lintels. The windows facing the street in the north have a balustrade, while the windows facing the courtyard and the quieter sides are flush with the floor. The façade reacts individually to the respective context.