Refurbished apartment block in Halle/Saale
The five-storey housing block Oleanderweg 21–45 in the Neustadt district of Halle/Saale, near Leipzig, was built in 1971. It used to accommodate 125 apartments in 13 individually accessed houses. The owner, the municipal housing company GWG Halle-Neustadt, had long been interested in remodelling one of its blocks in a way that would far exceed the standard norm. The International Building Exhibition (IBA) ‘Urban Redevelopment Saxony-Anhalt 2010’ provided the perfect opportunity to do so. Stefan Forster Architekten devoted a great deal of attention to the formerly undersized private exterior space: 30 m² roof terraces have been added to the uppermost apartments; continuous, deep balconies facing south onto an approximately 50-metre-wide green urban corridor to all other levels. The private gardens, allocated to the ground floor apartments, are unique within the district and extremely popular. An approximately 1.5-metre-high clinker brickwork base raises the gardens above the surrounding terrain, creating a boundary to the public space. Today the 11 houses accommodate 81 apartments. The former standard size – a 60 m² three-bedroom apartment with a windowless kitchen and bathroom – has given way to 18 different apartment layouts of which the smallest is 36 m² and the largest 130 m². Only every second staircase was retained now providing access to two, three or four dwelling units per level. The actual stair flights have only been changed in the entrance zones, whilst lifts have been installed into the stairwells.
