KARL MARX ALLEE
A MODERN HOUSING PALACE
Karl Marx Allee. The last grand boulevard in Europe. Built of residential palaces and created as scenery for military parades. The flagship of the good city throughout East Germany after WWII. A place with ambitions of urban life, cafes, culture and luxury homes - a paradise for people. The 60-year-old homes are still there, the rest has evaporated. The avenue stands as an urban life failure. As one of the main arterial for the city’s heart, the lack of activity along the avenue is striking. The scenario stands as a scar in the heart of the city. A scar filled with history, potential and quality.
This project aims to locally solve these problems. Through the creation of a more spatially diverse avenue it also establishes a gradient between the city’s public and private spaces, by combining activity-rich back-facades with the lifeless front-facades. By doing so the building becomes a node on the 2.3 km long procession, where traditional urban life blends together with the more private life in and around homes. The shape of the building is both a contrast to the existing stock typology and a direct reflection of the organisation of volumes within. Every single room is made visible in the facade, generating a repetitive, contrasting and harmonic elevation. Inspired by Adolf Loos’ thoughts regarding Raumplan, the apartments have an internal variation so the height of rooms match their purpose and function.
The building is seen as a starting point for a grander plan in a rejuvenation of the entire Karl Marx Allee.
