Apartment House in Berlin by Scharabi Architekten

The wooden building components have been left exposed in the interior. © Jan Bitter

Sustainable building techniques, social cohesion and a great degree of comfort come together at Holzhaus Linse [Engl.: Linse wooden house] in Berlin’s Schöneberg district. This creative living concept is a test for the metropolitan lifestyles of the future.

A warm living room with lots of wood on the walls, floor and ceiling. The open-plan kitchen has two white kitchen units and an island on a stone floor. Accent colors in yellow and purple: a yellow fume hood and a small purple cabinet.

Sliding doors enable open or closed spatial sequences as needed. © Jan Bitter

The new multistorey apartment block is located on busy Sachsendamm in the southwest of the city. It was created as part of an urban development project. The area known as the Schöneberger Linse describes the neighbourhood between the Südkreuz railway station and the Schöneberg station for commuter trains. A new urban quarter is slated to arise here by 2025.

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A social living program

The living program encompasses 18 residential units including a cluster apartment, a youth centre and several communal areas. The cluster apartment comprises four individual flats that share a large space with a balcony. It is reserved for women over 50. The ground floor is home to the youth centre.

The living room is furnished with a gray sofa, carpet, black wooden chair and a bookshelf. Wooden parquet flooring, plastered walls and wooden panels on the ceiling. A sliding door leads to a balcony overlooking the inner courtyard.

A living space with a generous balcony overlooking the yard. © Jan Bitter

Wood construction

The construction is based on solid-wood techniques with load-bearing facades of cross-laminated timber. Hollow wooden elements form the floors. The wooden components on the walls and ceilings have untreated surfaces; the wood remains exposed. The facade facing the road is covered with fibre-cement plates; towards the yard it is clad with larchwood.

The house façade is clad with gray panels and the windows are staggered. The balconies hang from the façade, fixed with two steel cables, and the balcony scaffolding is made of gray metal. Some balconies are glazed with sliding elements.

Sound-deadening windows facing the road ensure low noise levels inside the apartments. Fibre-cement plates clad the facade. © Jan Bitter

The façade in the inner courtyard has gray panels on the first floor and wooden cladding above. Large balconies hang out of the façade, held by two steel cables. In the inner courtyard, flowerbeds bloom, greenery abounds and there is a sandpit.

Towards the garden, the facade is clad with larchwood: it is pre-greyed on the ground floor and untreated on the upper levels. © Jan Bitter

Sustainability

The commitment to sustainability is discernible in the choice of carbon-sequestering wooden building materials. A ventilation system with heat recovery minimizes the need for heating. Any additional requirements are met by the heat generated by a brine/water heat pump and a micro-cogeneration unit.

A corridor leads to the kitchen with a stone slab floor and solid wood ceiling. The wooden kitchen island complements the white kitchen unit. Next to the kitchen, the flooring changes and a large opening opens up the room to plenty of light.

A spacious kitchen, © Jan Bitter

A glazed balcony with sliding elements, light-colored wooden flooring and white metal railings. The view falls onto the street axis with a long, pink-colored old building and some trees.

Some of the streetside balconies have been glazed. © Jan Bitter

Community-oriented living

The architecture supports communal living. The ground-floor multipurpose space, which faces the yard, the basement workshop and the yoga studio offer space for leisure activities. A wheelchair-accessible shower and toilet enable everyone in the apartment community to access these areas. Holzhaus Linse is as much an ecological example as a social model of future-oriented, inclusive metropolitan living.

Architecture: Scharabi Architekten
Client: Planungsgemeinschaft Holzhaus SL GbR
Location: Gotenstraße 44, 10829 Berlin (DE)

Project management: Mauer Bauprojektmanagement
Structural engineering: ifb frohloff staffa kühl ecker
Landscape architecture: hutterreimann landschaftsarchitektur gmbh
HVAC planning, electrical planning: Planungsbüro Dernbach
Fire prevention planning: brandschutzplus
Thermal building physics: Ingo Andernach
Sound insulation planning: Akustikbüro Krämer+Stegmaier