Festenbergsiedlung
COMPETITION WINNER
The starting point for our urban design for the new residential development at the intersection of Jägerstraße and Festenbergstraße in the Eller district lay in a detailed analysis of the neighbourhood and the community’s own wishes. The morphology of the Eller district is determined by road-building. Our design adopts and adapts this typology to the existing edge block development both in scale and size. Inspired by the results of community dialogue, our design adopts the familiar and proven form of the four storey, pitched roof profile which extrudes along the boundary edges of the site to create an edge-block structure. The site for the new development is located on the border between a compact city and an open settlement structure. With our design we are focused to take a clear position and promote urbanity and diversity. Therefore, we are creating the location as part of the compact city and not as a settlement. Another important aspect of creating civil dialogue was by linking the area with the surrounding urban environment. While the existing perimeter block development in Eller is largely based on the classic model of public exterior and private courtyard, the community expressed a desire to have an open courtyard. Consequently we have opened the yard with two routes. From north to south, a path connects the new town square with existing trees, through the courtyard and kindergarten, to the guest parking and beyond to the tram station. Furthermore, there is an east-west path connecting Festenbergstraße above the courtyard with the kindergarten and the “shared space” west of the proposed site. While the existing perimeter block development in Eller is largely based on the classic model of the public exterior and private courtyard, the citizens expressed a desire to open the courtyard. By opening the open space with two routes. Despite the development being largely based on the classic public-exterior and private-courtyard model we addressed the community’s wishes to open the space by introducing two routes. The first - running north to south - connects the new town square with existing trees, through the courtyard and kindergarten, to the guest parking and to the tram station beyond. The second is an east-west path that connects Festenbergstraße above the courtyard to the kindergarten and the “shared space” west of the planned site. The noise-exposed residential area, primarily to the commercial area in the west, requires a basic urban form, which creates a clear edge as protection against the noise pollution. The block building typology is very suitable for this, because the closed structure inside the block ensures peace of mind. In addition, we have worked on the building in such a way that a one-sided orientation of the apartments is possible in the west. The superordinate architectural motif is the homogeneous edge-block structure developed from the archetypal section profile. This motif is supported in its materiality by a homogeneous appearance of the roof and facade. The body of the building is structured by cuts, terraces and balconies, and thus also in its scale with the human scale, reconciled. It does not create a megastructure, but a finely articulated structure, mediating the urban planning scale of Eller and public discourse with historical references to the local area.
Size: 31.505 m²
Location: Düsseldorf-Eller, Germany
Collaborators: Urban Agency, RKW Architektur+, SQ1, FSWLA
Type: Invited Competition
Status: Competition 1st Prize
Team: Henning Stüben, Heechan Park, Rosa Fuentes Fernandez, Borja Santurino, Jakub Śmiech
