ENSEMBLESPREE assembleproductivity

ENSEMBLESPREE assembleproductivity

reinstating the river as the spine of city’s production

The non-polluting, silent and small-scale characteristics of the newest generation of production, could finally reverse the steady removal of production from the city and expand the scope of mixed-use development.

This project sought to codify a contemporary equivalent of the Kreuzberg Mischung – celebrated for the layering of living and working spaces from the street into the depth of the urban block, largely within in Mietshaus and Fabrik typologies and arranged around a sequence of interconnected courtyards. A new zoning was proposed, with an almost full spectrum of land uses and a production base of 25-30%.

A former industrial riverside site is the case study, an assessment of its existing indoor and outdoor spaces the starting point for working out a full catalogue of spatial typologies to achieve the new zoning.  An urban design agenda for the wider Kreuzberg area sees the inclusion of a sequence of public spaces at the river on axis with the existing formal-planned open space network. These new riverside spaces become focal points with spaces in fronting buildings made available in the first phase of a reoccupation and densification.

Exercises in volumetric massing identified spatially satisfying assemblages of existing and new buildings, while the requirement for reproducibility sought a certain standardisation and recognisability in the types of spaces generated – from alley to productive court and square. A final codification step translated the selected version into measures and guidelines to be tested on other case study sites.