The property is located in the Berlin district of Lichterfelde in a residential area with villas built around 1910.

 

The concept combines the preservation of the exterior appearance in its group of historic country house villas with a clear reference to the current cosmopolitan residents: Analogous to the Gründerzeit period, the conscious interventions with attention to light and reference to the garden are to be clearly readable and self-confidently visible.

 

Over the course of time, the building had undergone multiple improper alterations and over-forming and therefore proved to be highly porous and not very robust for refurbishment, so it was difficult and could only be handled with great care.

 

Fundamental overhaul here means partial deconstruction, disentanglement and demolition, but also preservation of the valuable building fabric, retrofitting in structural, static and energetic terms, as well as considerable fire protection requirements of german building class 4, among other things due to the Gründerzeit construction with wooden beam ceilings to be planned and executed with the utmost care.

The result is a combination of reworked existing elements and modern steel elements: The preservation of the building in terms of cubature, storeys and roof form is complemented by a modernized floor plan and better use of the existing space.

 

In particular, the upgrading of the basement and attic to high-quality living – after the expansion, a good 500 square meters of living space will be available here – will take place through a combination of many measures, always in a balance between preservation/reorganization of the existing building and additions/new construction, manifested, for example, by the use of floor-to-ceiling windows and French balconies in purist smooth sheet steel.

 

After the complete gutting, the building as a whole undergoes a radical modernization - for which a bit of stucco has to give way. Changes in the floor plan, new bathrooms, completely new floor structures including underfloor heating and suitable parquet flooring, renewal of the complete building services and installation of high-quality electrical and sanitary equipment.

 

Generous openings to the garden replace small windows, the reconstruction of the façade to the "correct" place of construction exposes the loggia in the attic and reconquers the oriel room to the living space. This is visible here as an intervention through large-format, loft-like steel windows in the area of the former loggias - back to the historic building exterior form.

The connection to the garden is achieved by opening the ground floor in this area as well as a terrace platform on several levels. This garden-side terrace structure is a stage to the garden on different plateaus - playable, walkable, plantable, distinguishable and a storage space for equipment and bicycles.

The merging of the two owner-occupied levels is done by a custom steel staircase with closed steel walls, as a special feature with considerable distance from the wall equal to a freestanding sculpture in the core of the living spaces in canary yellow.

 

Sustainability/Energy Concept/Material:

 

The key contribution is the sustainable use of existing bound energy: not demolishing the historic building fabric, as all competitors for the property had intended, saves the bound energy and transforms it from the 19th to the 21st century - and thus into the next 100 years of use.

 

The building fabric was upgraded and all construction measures were designed to ensure the best possible subsequent use or conversion of existing building fabric in compliance with the applicable EnEV laws. Significant interventions included the removal and redesign of the floor coverings on the second floor and first floor with underfloor heating, modern floor construction (TSD/WD) and the replacement of almost all windows with correspondingly high k-values and the retrofitting of the existing historic windows.

By replacing and re-sorting the doors, the construction work could be carried out with considerable carpentry work, but using almost all of the existing building fabric.

 

Sustainability and preservation of materials were emphasized in all reconstruction measures: For example, removing the existing floorboards, re-sorting doors and adding hardware, etc. This means a lot of small-scale sorting (Sisyphus) work, but in total it makes a difference.

This requires careful site management - the attentive sorting of containerized material, wood reuse, switchboards in a rolling system, reuse of covers, etc.

The garage will be demolished without replacement, an open area with gravel surface/water-borne. Cover (Boule), the garden is in work.

 

 

 

*In 2019 alone, 15,157 residential and non-residential buildings were demolished in Germany (source: Federal Statistical Office). In light of climate change, ever-increasing land consumption, and dwindling resources, we are committed to building in the existing stock.

Looking at the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of a building over its entire life cycle reveals that energy and CO2 are produced long before the building is actually used: Building materials and technology have to be produced and transported, the building has to be erected and possibly demolished at some point, and construction waste has to be disposed of.

This so-called gray energy and the associated CO2 emissions, the so-called CO2 footprint, do not play any role in state subsidy programs of the KfW for energy-efficient buildings or in the Building Energy Act that has just come into force; these focus solely on the utilization phase. In zero- and plus-energy buildings, for example, up to 40 percent of the energy expenditure is accounted for by the construction alone, as calculations by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) show. It is therefore advisable to introduce a holistic assessment of buildings, including gray energy.

In view of the climate crisis, it is a sensible task for architects to consider the cultural (identity formation) and ecological value of existing buildings.

 

In order to come closer to the task of making the building stock climate-neutral by 2050, it is precisely the "normal" projects in the housing stock that are needed, where demolition instead of renovation is usually carried out for practical reasons, with the justification that time and costs can be better controlled, although it is precisely in the intelligent, sustainable handling of the stock that the central challenge in the industry lies; a paradigm shift is advisable.