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Architects: x architekten
- Area: 1650 m²
- Year: 2009
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Photographs:Max Nirnberger
Text description provided by the architects. Task
There are leftover plots of land in every city which are difficult to build upon using conventional solutions. Intelligent solutions need to be developed for these challenging sites to seize opportunities for inner-city growth. The project for urban waste land offers innovative solutions which mitigate the need for the growth of city boundaries (“Urban Sprawl“).
Concept
A new type of house was designed for the plot in the Linzer Feilstraße which falls into a third category, after multi-storey buildings and terraced houses. A mixture of housing types are stacked up to give the building its structure. There is underground parking, business premises to liven up the street area with apartments above and two-storey courtyard houses on top. These two-storey courtyard houses offer a real alternative to a suburban detached house.
Implementation
Extended wooden poles which help integrate the banisters and specifically placed areas of colour accentuate the centrally located inner courtyard, with its arcades, as being the core of the development. Therefore, seven apartments with typical rooms can be found on the first floor. Apartments with patios and terraces can be found on two further levels on the floors above. These can be considered as small houses as each 92m2 unit has its own intimate and completely hidden courtyard. The patios are opened up on the side towards the street to enable a connection to the surroundings. Roofs which are slightly sloped towards the courtyards and rounded off towards the back of the building give the apartments, with their ceiling height of 3.7m, a generous character.
The three courtyard houses with their round-arched roofs, give the impression that they are sitting upon the building structure below, creating the building’s identity and its unique appearance from a distance. The patios face outwards and form an incision into the cubic structure giving the introverted and tightly packed building its structure and openness. With the building being situated at the corner of the Feilstraße this aspect is emphasised by a change in the material of the façade. The building presents itself with white plaster on the western façade and on the eastern side the roof is covered with trapezoidal sheet metal runs along the outer walls of the courtyard houses, along the façade and down to the premises.
