Helmerdingstraße 3 mixed-use building architecture project is the thirty-eight article on projects from practice. This project is an urban design and architecture project located on the east side of the city of Berlin. A few kilometers away from the city center with adjacent rail links and public transport routes. This facility makes this project in unique and attractive location for selling, purchase, and rent. This architectural and urban development follows the typical style of urban design in the city though the concept is new. The front side of the building has street frontage access while the backside has access to an internal open space that is connected to the main roads from openings through the block. See Figure 1, the site plan of the project from Google.
The housing project on Helmerdingstraße in Berlin is comprised of eight proposed developments on a single block. In 2012 two of the eight projects had reached the completion stage. The architecture firm appointed an architect who is working as the architect along with a collection of project managers and future inhabitants. This process is inherent to the design and development of each building to achieve an outcome of ‘shared authorship’. This idea is widely spread along most of the residential buildings in Berlin which is an architecture of the client needs. The client along with the architecture firm specifies his needs in terms of functional requirements and the budget allocated to the flat and the building as a whole. The idea is also common in some European countries like Norway ( see my article on that project ).
Helmerdingstraße was the second building to be completed in 2011. The design outcome is a tessellating combination of apartments that are fluid, each floor plan varying slightly depending on the needs of the inhabitants. Another feature is the execution of various vistas and viewpoints from the interior to the exterior. Each apartment has undergone extensive analysis to ensure that sunlight and views outside are optimal. The building design is a more deconstruction style architecture in terms of an open plan system. Though the designers show that their design is open and changeable client demand for this change is limited to some spaces but not all the apartments. See Figure 2, 3 the front street elevation and the backside landscape elevation.
As shown in Figure 4 the ground floor plan has the services in the street frontage façade and access to the kindergarten by the central entrance foyer. The floor includes one apartment of a larger size apartment having access to the first-floor part from an internal staircase. The flat and the kindergarten have access to the internal open space landscape from a raised platform and the building itself has direct access from the main road to the backside landscape through an open balcony and exit at the end. The first floor, figure 5, has two apartments accessed from a central vertical circulation, and one apartment is smaller in size than the other. The big apartment includes a study and an open sitting in two locations as per the client’s demand. The large size apartment has access to the main road and the rear side of the building landscape open area through a balcony. The small size apartment has access to the main road only.
The typical floor plan, figure 6, is the typical floor plan of the building that is slightly different from the ground floor and the first floor in the services layout. The external form of the building is similar on all floors in the front elevation and the backside elevation.
This typical floor plan from the second floor to the fifth floor is similar and minor differences in the roof plan as it follows the external architectural form layout. These typical floors have a common circulation area and large-size apartments, 150 Sqm, including two-bedroom and three-bedroom flats. All flats have access to the backside elevation and front-side elevation through their balconies to provide light and fresh air. See Figure 7 the staircase typical design photo.
The architecture of this building is an integration of all modern / deconstruction architectural styles in terms of functional layout and external form. The architecture follows the sustainable architecture principles of low energy usage, maximum daylight access to internal space, common open space and landscape, safe routes on all building sides, and providing multiple functions for the building that add attraction and feasibility of usage.
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