Social housing Helsinkistrasse

Block perimeter development is one of the typical systems used in the new development of the former airport at Munich-Riem. This urban expansion area on the eastern edge of Munich is conceived primarily as a family-friendly, large-scale new housing development with a wide range of leisure time amenities. The building stands on the southern edge of the large landscaped Riem Park and at ground floor level has an integrated three-group children’s day care centre in which the group rooms are oriented towards an outdoor play area in the south.

The structure of the building, which consists of load-bearing sidewalls and a central structural wall, allows a free organisation of the floor plans, both for the children’s day care centre as well as for the subsidised apartments above. The flexible structural system with non-load bearing cross walls allows different combinations of apartments ranging from two to five rooms in size with, generally speaking, continuous living, eating and cooking areas and a minimal amount of corridor space. On the south and west sides the apartments, most of which face in two directions, have continuous balconies in which the two-metre deep main area in front of the living room can be reached by narrow catwalks from the other rooms. A uniform coat of light green was chosen for the building, in the plinth zone the thermal insulation facade is protected by small ceramic tiles.

The aim of giving all apartments and communal spaces a direct relationship to the outdoors and to the landscaped park led to a balcony structure that shapes the character of the entire facade of the complex, making it look like an apartment block on a Mediterranean coast rather than on the eastern periphery of Munich.