Berlin Postwar Apartment Transformed Into Modernist Home for Young Family

The lack of affordable housing can be felt in many of the world's major metropolises nowadays, whether that's New York, Paris, London, or Hong Kong. The same goes for Berlin, which currently has one of Europe's hottest housing markets—meaning affordable housing is scarce, while housing prices have shot up. The local government has made a series of attempts to cool things down recently, with Berliners—of whom a large majority are renters—supporting a proposal to seize 240,000 units from "mega-landlords" and folding them back into the city's affordable housing stock.

Besides this grassroots push to soften the stranglehold of corporate landlords, there's also a move to create more new homes out of existing buildings. Some of east Berlin's Soviet-era buildings—dubbed "Plattenbau" for their prefabricated concrete slab structures—are of particular interest, as they offer lots of possibilities for flexible floor plans.

Despite the Plattenbau's reputation as a bit of a monotonous fixture in eastern parts of Germany, the lack of affordable housing has meant these somewhat dreary and standardized buildings are looking much more attractive. Studios, like France's l'atelier Nomadic Architecture Studio, are helping to remake these drab interiors into stylish modern homes, as they did for one young family from Berlin.

The studio's new scheme, nicknamed the Domesticated Square Apartment, measures 947 square feet (88 square meters), and essentially transforms what used to be a two-bedroom apartment into three bedrooms and an office. As the architects explain, this design hat trick was facilitated by the comparative adaptability of the Plattenbau typology:

"Berlin’s urban condition of housing is mostly defined by 'Altbau' and 'Plattenbau'. The Atlbau is the classical architecture from the late 19th century with high ceilings, thick bearing walls and a structure of large corridors and passages with non-hierarchical rooms. The Plattenbau is the post-war architecture housing bloc, with rational and orthogonal shapes. The biggest advantage of the Plattenbau is that there are, in most of the cases, no structuring walls in the spaces, which gives the opportunity for a blank page for a renovation."

This particular apartment is on the fourth floor and is luckily situated at the end of the apartment block, meaning it has sun exposure to the west, east, and south.

The new design involves more programmatic elements than the previous layout, which included only two bedrooms, an enclosed kitchen, and a small living room. To create the new scheme, the architects opted to arrange things around a "central and open catalyst." In this case, a multifunctional, main living space that serves as a common gathering space for sitting, walking, eating, displaying books, and even an indoor hammock swing. The designers say:

"The result [of this new layout] is a domesticated square, surrounded by a series of small mono-functional rooms: entrance hall, office room, intimate corridor, guest room, kitchen and terrace. They all have a direct access to the central square and nourish each other with different interfaces and relationships."

Branching off to sides of this "domesticated square" are the rest of the elements, including the kitchen here, which features built-in cabinetry and appliances to save space and reduce visual clutter.

To keep the kitchen's minimalist appearance still visually interesting, some polycarbonate elements have been added here to offer a hint of what's behind it.

Balancing out the more open side of the communal living spaces are the more private areas of the bedrooms, bathroom, and office on the other side of the apartment. These are hidden behind a wall of wooden material, which integrates storage cabinets throughout, as well as an intriguing laser-cut window.

The bedrooms, like this guest room we see here, have storage integrated underneath the bed, and against the walls. To keep light flowing throughout the home, the doors have dematerialized into full-height, polycarbonate panels that slide to open and close, and are translucent enough to let sunlight through without compromising privacy.

A more "intimate corridor" here is sectioned off from the rest of the apartment, offering pathways into the other two bedrooms, bathroom, and home office.

Here is the master bedroom, which has its own windows, integrated under-bed storage, and a modular shelving unit.

This project is a great example of how old housing can be transformed into something new and refreshing. Ultimately, Berlin's case for readapting its existing housing stock is not unique to Berlin alone; the same approach could be applied to many cities all over the world—certainly, it can be part of a greener solution to the global housing crisis.

To see more, visit l'atelier Nomadic Architecture Studio.