We managed to increase the floor space of the 1926 terraced house, which used to have one hundred and sixty-four square meters of living and usable space, by thirty-nine percent without changing the volume of the building. The completely renovated building enriches the exclusive residential area between Grüneburg Park and the Alte Oper with a bistro and three modern residential units.

The ceiling beams damaged during the war had to be replaced in large parts and the energy system completely overhauled. In accordance with the conservation statutes, the shape of the building was only slightly altered. However, we have made use of the design scope to modernize the structural silhouette. The asymmetrically extended rooms are also visible on the façade. Above this, a roof sail interrupts the traditional roof shape, which the neighboring houses still have. In the field of tension between a fourteen-storey office tower renovated into luxury apartments and the terraced housing development of the 1920s, this detail creates a caesura between yesterday and today.

 

In order to gain space in the urban environment, the basement has been converted into a basement retail space. During the planning phase, the location, orientation and complex structural interventions were examined in detail in order to prove the cost-effectiveness of the measure.

Backfilled earth in the front garden was removed and the front garden was lowered to street level. A depression leads to the entrance of the bistro, which measures sixty-two square meters and whose ceiling has been raised in stages. By "nesting the spatial volumes" of the basement and ground floor into one another, we achieve a spacious entrance area in the bistro and yet do not lose an inch of living space in the ground floor apartment above.

We have converted the unused front garden, which was previously occupied by huge conifers, into an attractive summer garden, which gains plenty of daylight thanks to the subtly downward-opening perforated window façade. The renovation of the building is generously reflected in the streetscape. The extremely high redensification of the terraced house gains far more than a third in living and usable space thanks to our "nested design principle", details that demonstrate the purist yet space-efficient design style of our office.

You can find an article on this in the Deutsche BauZeitschrift.