CCB Magazine

Coworking has become a household name - meaning to work with different creative people in one office. But what about co-housing? The Berlin architect Verena von Beckerath, together with her partner Tim Heide and the office ifau and Jesko Fezer, has developed a co-house in Kreuzberg, and there it is. What is the idea behind it? And for whom is the concept suitable?

INTERVIEW   JENS THOMAS

CCB Magazine: Hello Mrs. von Beckerath, you and your agency HEIDE & VON BECKERATH have together with ifau and Jesko Fezer initiated the project R50 - co-housing, a building community in Berlin-Kreuzberg in the Ritterstraße. How can I imagine this?

Verena von Beckerath:The house at Ritterstraße 50 is a model project that we designed and implemented together with all parties involved - a project manager and the building owners. It is a free-standing house, a building surrounded by different post-war Berlin housing concepts, with six full stories with basement and attic. It consists of 19 individual apartments, a studio and rooms for shared use. On the lowered entrance level there is a two-story, flexible common room, which is linked to the house's overall development concept and - on the upper level - to the public space of the street.

CCB Magazine:Co-housing as a term is already 30 years old. The American architect Charles Durrett, who studied in Denmark, coined the term back then and subsequently implemented several projects. Today, there are more than 150 projects in the USA and a few in Europe. Is yours the first house of its kind in Berlin?

Verena von Beckerath:Co-housing projects have, of course, been around in Berlin for quite some time. Examples of this are the formerly occupied house in Manteuffelstraße 40/41, which is now cooperatively operated within the framework of a cooperative, or the "Wohnregal" in Admiralstraße 16, built by the Selbstbaugenossenschaft Berlin e.G. in the 1980s - both in Kreuzberg. R50 was also initially planned as a cooperative model and was finally realized as a construction consortium within the framework of a concept-bound property allocation procedure of the Berlin real estate fund. What is special about this and other comparable projects is that they are joint projects that were not only developed together with the parties involved, but in which the residents and the owners of the apartments themselves live and interact with each other.

The special thing about R50 is that it was not only developed with the people involved, but that some of them live there themselves

CCB Magazine:At first glance, this sounds like an ordinary multigenerational house, which is used as a living space or open meeting place across the generations. Where is the difference?

Verena von Beckerath:The focus is less on generations and more on the community as such, and in return the house offers a number of features: there is an entrance area, garden, circumferential balconies and a summer kitchen on the roof for everyone. In the common room of R50, people meet, help each other, workshops are held, school tasks are done together. The room is also available for neighborhood initiatives. Ideally, an exchange of ideas with the local residents takes place here.

CCB Magazine:Please tell us: Who actually lives in the R50?

Verena von Beckerath:Architects, artists and creative people live here with their families, among others, who identify strongly with the house. This is also a quality feature of the project. All decisions were made together during the planning and construction phase, and everyone has been involved in the project from the very beginning.

There it is: the Co-House R50 at Ritterstraße 50.

CCB Magazine:Why do these people become owners?

Verena von Beckerath:On the one hand, to identify with their own home within a community; the residents feel very connected to the overall project because it was also their project from the beginning and they therefore have a very conscious relationship with becoming owners. On the other hand, because rents in the city center have been rising sharply for a number of years and people would like to live in Kreuzberg in a few years' time. In the long run, such a project will also pay off. The square meter price of the floor space is approx. 2,150 Euro gross, including taxes and property costs. That is extremely favorable.

CCB Magazine:Your project focuses on sustainability. What is sustainable about R50?

Verena von Beckerath:In our case, it means ecological, economic and social aspects: ecological, in that the compact building is highly insulated and energy consumption is thus 30 percent below the valid energy saving regulations. Economical, because it is comparatively inexpensive due to its construction, simple standards and reduced surfaces. In addition, we believe - and this would be the social aspect - that the flexibility of the project is also open to future changes and makes them possible. At the moment many families with children live here. However, the house is adaptable to different ways of life due to its offer of communal areas and the possibility of reconstruction, which is inscribed in it and which is conditioned by its construction.

Here's the deal: Inside the Co-House.

CCB Magazine:But which aspects of their project can be transferred to residential areas with socially weaker milieus, where people cannot afford it so far?

Verena von Beckerath:Of course, we also think about this and discuss such topics with the Berlin housing associations, for example. These companies are also in the process of reviewing building and housing typologies and restructuring allocation modalities to enable greater quality and social equality in the city. The question now is how experimental projects like R50 can be transferred to the mass housing market. Of course, this will not be done one-to-one. But certain aspects, such as common areas for residents or participatory opportunities for co-determination, are especially interesting in areas with lower incomes, in order to improve housing offers and to intensify social contacts. Mixed concepts are also conceivable, and here, too, we are working together with ifau on a larger project at the former flower wholesale market in the southern part of Friedrichstadt. In this case, in addition to owners, a cooperative is involved, which rents out their apartments. By means of a levy, which the owners grant to the co-operatives, the co-operative rent can be fixed for a certain period of time.

Politicians are now called upon to integrate concepts like R50 into the allocation structures of Berlin's real estate policy

CCB Magazine:To what extent is it also the task of politics to integrate concepts like R50 into the allocation structures of Berlin's real estate policy?

Verena von Beckerath:Politics is now in demand, and the R50 project was one of the first projects to emerge from a concept-bound award procedure of the Liegenschaftsfonds that was explicitly aimed at building groups. This was in 2010, and this step must surely also be seen in the context of a new orientation of Berlin's real estate policy, which for years had always proceeded according to the premise that land should be sold at the highest possible bid. A change has been taking place here for some time now; a start has been made on using the allocation process in certain situations also in the sense of a cooperative urban development policy.

CCB Magazine:Mrs. von Beckerath, thank you very much for this interview.