Schwarzwaldblock

City block

Location: Mannheim
Year: 2016
Residential units: 235
Gross floor area (GFA): 26 030 m²
Client: Baugenossenschaft Spar- und Bauverein 1895 Mannheim eG
Project team: Florian Kraft, Jelena Duchrow, Ildikó Návay, Ferdinand Oswald, Andreas Wenger
Address: Schwarzwaldstraße 5–13 / Haardtstraße 15–19 / Meerwiesenstraße 4–18, 68163 Mannheim
Photos: Lisa Farkas

View from the north down Schwarzwaldstraße of the previous 1950's building, and two of the three earlier listed buildings from the late 19th century (left)

Typologically the Schwarzwaldblock in Mannheim is an urban residential block. In combination with three older buildings with listed status that do not form part of the project, this block forms a closed, almost triangular perimeter development which precisely follows the arc of the surrounding streets. The history of this site is closely connected with the site owner – a housing cooperative called Wohnungsgenossenschaft Spar- und Bauverein Mannheim 1895. In the early 1920s the cooperative acquired the undeveloped plot between Schwarzwaldstraße, Hardtstraße and Meerwiesenstraße. In the following years, from 1925 to 1927, it then built the Schwarzwaldblock, a cooperative housing complex, laid out as an urban perimeter-block development. The housing was completely destroyed in air raids in the Second World War, and subsequently rebuilt using low-quality building materials salvaged from the rubble. Because of irreparable building defects and the contaminated soil at the site, it became necessary to demolish the 190 apartments in this rebuilt complex. In order to be able to keep the residents in the district, demolition work and the construction of the new housing development was conducted step by step, in four phases between 2007 and 2016.

The new Schwarzwaldblock is an example of timeless, quiet urban architecture: Towards the outside the five- to six-storey building volume defines the street space, on the inside it encloses a shared courtyard area. The overall shape of the development, with its continuous clinker-clad base storey and sculpted corner buildings, follows the tradition of residential housing design of the 1920s. Inspired by the “reform blocks” of Fritz Schumacher in Hamburg and the social housing tradition in Vienna, the Schwarzwaldblock continues the urban structure in its own, clear language of forms and takes up the motif of the open courtyard for collective use. The building forms encountered in surrounding development influenced the design of details such as the window ledges combining to create cornices, the light-grey pilaster strips and the incised entrance areas, as well as the palette of materials with light-coloured plaster surfaces and beige-coloured clinker bricks. In total the Schwarzwaldblock provides 235 barrier-free apartments with tenant gardens on the ground floor, and balconies and loggias, or roof terraces, for the apartments above.

Façade elevation, Schwarzwaldstraße with adjacent existing building (left)

Satellite images of the Schwarzwaldblock (Google Earth). (1) March 2006: Previous buildings before removal. (2) February 2011: The new buildings of phases one and two are complete, and the site for phase three has been cleared. (3) May 2016: All four phases are complete. Work on the tenant gardens and the facilities in the central courtyard has just been finished.

Façade modulation on Schwarzwaldstraße

Front garden zone along Haardtstraße

Meeräckerblock

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