By Hans Thor Andersen
During the week 7th to 13th of October, four AAU researchers (Lene Wiell Nordberg, Rikke Skovgaard Nielsen, Claus Bech-Danielsen and Hans Thor Andersen) visited first Potsdam and later Berlin to learn about co-housing in Germany.
Credits for images: DASH AAU team
The first visit was to our partner Inwole in the eastern part of Potsdam. Inwole began as a co-housing project, where housing was the main function, but has developed to become a workplace as well. Originally, an old house once owned by the nobility was purchased and redeveloped to house members of the collective. Later, a variety of workshops and a new residential building were added. Today, Inwole is home to about 25 people. The co-housing organisation is partly financed by delivering services to ‘outsiders’ – i.e. after-school workshops for children, ceramic workshops and much more – as well by renting out meeting facilities.
The second cohousing project visited was the former Ufa-factory, a former factory belonging to the German film producer UFA, which used the property for mass-copying films for distribution. Thus, several buildings were constructed on the ground such as store facilities with a guaranteed maximum temperature at 18 C to protect the films, an employee canteen, an administration building and a pre-premiere cinema. About 40 years ago, i.e. in the early 1980s, a group of people formed an alliance and moved in after the premises had been vacated by UFA. Over the years, the co-housing project has added new activities; today there are a broad variety of arts and cultural offers, a school, a neighbourhood center, a children’s zoo, a guesthouse, a bakery, a café, a circus for children and much else. In total, about 200 people are employed in the area while there are only 35 residents.
Spreefeld, a relatively new cohousing project, started with a plot of 7400 sqm at the widest part of the river Spree east of the sector border. The area contained many ruins and run down factories and the land had a low cost (the land is now owned by the city of Berlin). The location is highly central, about 2 km from Alexanderplatz, and directly on the river.
The Spreefeld project intended to create a socially just, economically stable, and environmentally responsible urban building block. To be as inclusive and affordable as possible, the project is based on self-help construction and modular buildings, but also low-cost materials. Moreover, Spreefeld is based on shared spaces to minimize rents; thus, individual apartments are smaller than traditional dwellings.
Common to the projects was a bottom-up approach involving direct democracy, where unanimous acceptance of new ideas and plans is sought. Sustainability also has great weight in the three cohousing projects, where culture and social efforts play a major role. All three projects have operating agreements with the municipality/state for several projects (school, kindergarten, and consultancy). The commitment and energy of the residents is a key factor behind the success of the projects, as are favorable financing conditions (such as obtaining long-term leases on attractive areas as well as operating support for social and cultural activities).
The following days were spent visiting the IBA project (Internationaler Bau Ausstellung) in the Hansaviertel (built by some of the most famous architects of the time in the late 1950s), but also the Weissesstadt in Reinickendorf, which represents one of the first attempts at large-scale construction in the funk style, Stalin Alle – the first socialist street in Germany (which helped spark the revolt against GDR rule in 1953). We also visited Marzahn, a large-scale concrete estate whose population peaked at about 175,000 in the 1990s. It is up to 12-15 stories high and was built in the 1980s but has since been thoroughly renovated, not least to make it more energy efficient.
