Quarter Breitensee city planning competition 1 prize

City planning concept

The creation of a clear identity for the area newly gained for the city and the associated preservation and opening of the previously closed and publicly inaccessible natural area, as well as the inclusion of the urban dense environment in the future development, with regard to a spatial and functional upgrade, are the essential cornerstones and basis for the realization of the new district in the middle of a public park.

The targeted settings of the new building structures react to the outside urban space, interactively to existing relationships, such as building and street lines.

The concentration of the volumes at the edges of the area creates a campus-like quality. The largest possible natural space is kept free towards the inside of the park and a connection with the street space is ensured via public pathes.

Due to these dispositions it was possible to preserve most of the existing valuable trees. This creates a natural recreational space for future residents and users, as well as for the surrounding neighborhood.

Development / dedication

Tree-lined headlands are interlocked with the specific figuration of the buildings and the squares along Leyserstraße and Spallartgasse. The basis of the building structure developed from the location uses existing clearings.

The volumetry also reacts in its height development to the surrounding stock, considering sensitive points and neighborly interests. The position and layout of the buildings were very consciously set up in dialogue with the respective counterpart.This results in synergetic effects with the existing uses and activities and the project maintains the given scale despite a high density.

The tree population can be kept resilient and the public use of the remaining park can be sustainably secured, permeability as an invitation to a nationally mixed recreational area. These parameters were listed in great detail in the dedication and decided by the municipal council: definition of the green space, public passages and development possibilities.

Volumetry

The building configuration in horizontal and vertical expansion allows, despite the high density, free space for the trees and the park, as well as reaction to neighborly conditions and also balanced natural lighting conditions for the individual residential floors down to the uses of the ground floor.

The horizontal extension of the structure is essentially north-south, that means, the orientation of the apartments within is mainly east-west. A much smaller proportion of the buildings, especially along the traffic-calmed Spallartgasse, are oriented east-west, i.e. in this case the apartments are oriented south-north.

Overall, this special geometry – a comb-shaped structure that is open to the south – enables optimal lighting conditions to be achieved for all locations within the building. Approx. 50-55% are east and or west oriented, 38-42% south oriented, and 6-10% north oriented towards the traffic-calmed Spallartgasse. Between April and August, the sun shines in these apartments in the morning and in the evening due to the altitude and the neighboring buildings.