Stendal
2022-
Caroline Axelsen
Christian Cotting
David Gössler
Patrick Holzer
Aimée Michelfelder
Caterina Ricci
Jakob Wolters
und Jurek Brüggen
in collaboration with AFEA
co-initiated and co-developed by AADA (until April 2024)
photos by Alexander Paul Brandes and David Hiepler
The single-family house remains the most popular form of housing in Europe. However, in the face of the climate crisis, housing shortages, and increasingly diverse lifestyles, this form of housing is coming under growing criticism.
The project Einfamilienhaus-Haus proposes a new typology that lies somewhere between the apartment block and the single-family house. How can the dream of a single-family home be reconciled with a sustainable future? The existing blocks are to be transformed so that each unit offers the qualities of a single-family house.
The most popular form of housing – the single-family house – may yet have a future in an ecological world.
The ecological cost is enormous. Germany produces around 230 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste every year, more than half of the country’s total waste. Only a tiny fraction of it can be recycled for new buildings. The grey energy stored in the existing structures is lost as well. Low-density single-family housing also drives urban sprawl, traffic and soil sealing. Between 2021 and 2024, about 50 hectares of land were consumed for settlement and transport every day in Germany. Sealed ground no longer supports biodiversity or rainwater infiltration, and it contributes to urban overheating. Globally, the building and construction sector accounts for around 37% of energy- and process-related CO₂ emissions.
Can a single-family house exist inside an apartment block? Can existing panel buildings be converted so that they offer all the qualities of a single-family house instead of being torn down? Einfamilienhaus-Haus answers yes. Each house has a private entrance and its own address, a front garden and its own garden. Living spaces extend over two storeys, and residents are free to shape their homes and gardens themselves. Former stairwells and a new open “vertical street” link the houses like a neighbourhood stacked in layers.
Compared with building new detached houses on the same plot area, the concept provides 2.6 times as many homes and leaves 3.6 times as much public space. No new land is sealed. The sealed area is cut in half, and new roof gardens fully compensate for what remains.
Following the construction logic of the panel building, the block is deconstructed step by step from the top down. Vacant apartments are removed or merged, and the dismantled panels are largely reused to reinforce the remaining structure. The terraced roofs that result become gardens. Several small apartments are combined across two storeys into houses with generous roof gardens and living rooms more than five metres high. A new self-supporting façade layer brings insulation and building services up to current standards.
The south façade carries photovoltaic panels, so the building is climate-neutral in its annual energy balance. Plastered east and west façades show the volumes of the individual houses. New cuts into the existing structure are insulated and clad in timber. The fully greened roofs extend the neighbourhood’s green space up onto the building.
The building in Stendal is the first prototype of a planned Einfamilienhaus-Haus umbrella cooperative. Panel buildings of the same type stand empty and face demolition across eastern Germany, so the concept can be applied to many more of them. The cooperative secures long-term, community-oriented development and use. Existing owners and new residents can both become members. In Stendal, the two neighbouring blocks are to be converted in the same way after the first one is completed, creating a small Einfamilienhaus-Haus quarter.