Westgarten 01

City building

Location: Frankfurt am Main
Year: 2005
Residential units: 70
Gross floor area (GFA): 9 250 m²
Client: Max Baum Immobilien GmbH
Project team: Florian Kraft, Nina Leipold, Reinhardt Mayer, Christina Voigt
Address: Zanderstraße 8–12 / Speicherstraße 44, 60327 Frankfurt am Main
Other functions: supermarket, row of shops
Project partner: Karl Richter
Photos: Lisa Farkas / Jean-Luc Valentin

View from th community centre under construction looking southwest to the courtyard side of "Westgarten 01". The picture shows the raised garden on the roof of the supermarket. The windows seen here in the fire wall from the fifth floor upward had to be subsequently filled in. Instead of the originally planned school building, Stefan Forster Architekten built the "Westgarten 02" residental building on the adjacent plot in 2013. August 2010

Westgarten 01 is an apartment block with retail space which was designed by Stefan Forster Architekten in a decisive phase for the practice. Even during work on the transformation of large, prefabricated apartment blocks in Leinefelde, Stefan Forster was already closely engaged with the construction of large-scale residential developments in Frankfurt am Main. The conditions found in both these places could hardly have been more different: on the one hand a shrinking small town suffering from an ever increasing number of empty properties, and on the other, an expanding city under pressure to increase development density. Westgarten 01 (2005) and the apartments at Voltastraße (2006) are two projects which exemplify the debate around urban housing during this period: a typological further development of the large city block, or a re-interpretation of the local-authority housing block.

In this context Westgarten 01 can be regarded as a programmatic formulation of the architectural qualities of an urban apartment building. First the building volume itself is seen as a clearly articulated geometric volume which dispenses with projecting sections such as canopies and balconies. In plan the building precisely traces the edge of the city block, and, together with neighbouring buildings, forms a continuous line of development. Special attention was paid to the design of the street façade with horizontal bands of warm-brown

clinker brick and light-coloured cast concrete. Varying façade depths create a relief that gives rise to a changing interplay of light and shade depending on time of day. As a key element of elegant buildings in the city, large openings (the shop windows on the ground floor, the loggias and windows of the residential storeys) communicate with the street space. Low parapets support a level of openness while also protecting the private sphere of the individual apartments. The garden, carefully laid out with cherry trees, pine trees and spring bulbs around a central pond, is located on the roof of the supermarket. Despite the relatively low depth of the substrate, some of the trees now reach up several storeys.

The 70 apartments in the building offer comfortable and contemporary accommodation that also benefits from plenty of natural daylight. There are flexible-plan layouts for lounges and kitchens, while bedroom spaces are closed. Originally it was planned to have a row of cafés and shops on the ground floor, but in practice these proved difficult to let, so after a few years the space was used to extend the supermarket. Westgarten 01 is part of a perimeter block structure that was added to by Stefan Forster Architekten in 2012 with the community centre on the east side, and again in 2013 with Westgarten 02, a residential building on the south side of the block.

View from the south of the junction of Zanderstraße / Speicherstraße

Gemeindezentrum

zum Projekt

Westgarten 02

zum Projekt

View over the garden towards the south

Entrance to the building on Zanderstraße

Entrance area with stairs up to the garden

Newsmeldungen