View from the west of the former Shell petrol station at the junction of Sandweg / Wingertstraße

From 1948 onwards, one of Frankfurt’s oldest independent petrol stations and one of the last such small operators in the inner city, stood at the corner of Sandweg and Wingertstraße. In early 2011 the long-term owner sold the 1,800 square-metre site to the project developer GeRo Real Estate. Subsequently 31 freehold apartments were built here at the interface of the two urban districts of Bornheim and Ostend, in an established residential district not far from Frankfurt Zoo and Berger Straße. The new development consists of a corner block with shop unit, along with a pair of semi-detached houses in the interior courtyard. As later with the Bockenheim Campus project, this building on Sandweg displays clear references to the architecture of Tel Aviv’s “White City”. The balconies that run almost the entire length of the building on both sides, and the deeply indented roof terraces, evoke images of Mediterranean houses or a cruise ship moored at a quayside.

Despite these references, the new building does not seem alien. The proportions and scale of the building echo that of the surrounding development, and were simply re-interpreted, taking into account the line of development along the street. While the street front along Sandweg traces the block edge precisely, on Wingertstraße the front is set back slightly. Private gardens occupy the space thus created between the street and the building; they are bordered by a clinker-brick wall and a hedge – a typical front-garden situation in late 19th-century urban districts. Details such as the profiled clinker base storey, the quarter-circles of the balustrades of the loggias and the raised corner sections give the building volume a light, elegant impression. The one- to four-room apartments, with a high-spec finish, have flexible ground plans; on the ground floor they have private gardens, and on the upper storeys balconies, loggias or roof terraces. In the courtyard, a pair of semi-detached houses with patio occupy the space where the garage workshop used to be.

View from the west, junction of Sandweg / Wingertstraße

View across the courtyard towards the west

West side of the semi-detached houses in the courtyard