City Machines

City Machines

Potentials of transformation for urban commercial areas

The work attempts to make a contribution to the further development of social housing and to draw promising future prospects for a sustainable urban densification and a relief of the strained housing market.

It aims to prove that even today, strategies can be developed that enable urban densification and at the same time create a general improvement for our cities living conditions. The project also explores architectural paths to more fluid and self-empowered concepts of housing.

The work starts by identifying urban commercial areas as large carriers of unused space and shows their spatial potentials in a typology atlas, using the example of Berlin.

Based on a case study of a DIY store in Berlin Schöneberg, a transformation concept was
developed that combines existing commercial uses with other public functions, and in particular social housing.

The existing lightweight construction of the DIY store was demolished for the transformation due to its poor spatial qualities. Its prefabricated components are used again in the new design.

The apartments in the new structure are meant to serve as open spatial offers for the realisation of a variety of living concepts. This is achieved, through flexible interconnectivity and strong spatial relationships between the units. Thanks to a system of modular interior walls, the units can always be organised individually, as the walls can be assembled and disassembled with very little effort by the inhabitants.


Name

Maximilian Vogel

Year

2024

Type

Master Thesis