A concept to reduce the waste of space in an apartment building.
Assemble London Architects and a group known as the oldest squatters in the world present their concept at Wohnungsfrage (‘Questions on Living’) lecture series at HKW in Berlin. The group of retirees recently fought to keep their community space at Stille Strasse in Berlin.
The architects and the group collaboratively designed a building with a focus on inter-generational, community living and reuse of space. The core of the design was coupling a residential space next door to a ‘garage’, with utilities outside.
The residential space will be private and owned. The garage will be rented from a co-operative group.
When the garage is not needed by the residential owners living next door, they return the garage to the pool of garages run by the co-op. The co-op would then lease out the garage to another party.
Assemble group saw a sample life cycle of a garage space as outlined above – the space is used at first to build furniture for the new owners, then to run a small yoga business, later when the residents have a family it can become a play/dining space, and finally after the family has grown up, the garage may no longer be needed and can be returned to the co-op.
A 1-1 model of the space was exhibited at HKW, Berlin. The utilities are placed outside to make the garage space more accessible for people other than the residents of the living space.
The full talk is online here.