Neu-Hohenschönhausen, a suburb of Berlin, lies north of the city center and is home to almost 60,000 residents. This development like many of others at the time, was an attempt to quickly provide East Germany with much needed living space for the growing city, through the implementation of dense panel building housing blocks.
Roughly 35,000 units were to be built by 1988, which could house almost 100,000 residents. In 1973, the SED had approved large housing development program in East Germany. By 1990, they anticapted to curb the housing shortage. Several new residential developments broke ground with one of the largest being Neu-Hohenschönhausen.
Our strategy was to retain the existing shape and design of the neighbourhood. As a result, no new buildings or structures were implemented. Instead, we focused on accentuating and clearly defining existing building block grids, connecting them, closing gaps, transforming them into a modern neighbourhood through specific techniques and thus future proofing the entire district.
Our design represents a possible scenario with many different arrangements and variations. It offers a wide range of possibilities and strategies that aim at promoting interactive neighbourhoods within the district on different scales. New interactive spaces such as the Green Ring which offers generous space for recreational activities to the rededicated interactive street space clusters located between blocks all the way to the live-work spaces on the 8th floor connected via a common deck, allow residents to get involved in their neighbourhood as well as assisting in local startups.
Integrative interactive spaces for residents not only needed to function on a personal neighbourhood with in the buildings themselves, but are designed to function on a much broader scale, across the entire district, offering ample opportunity for residents to interact with others throughout their community.