The premises of the former Spinelli Barracks are Mannheim’s second-largest housing development area. With a froggy-green residential quarter parts of what used to be military premises is transformed into a lively biotope with an ensemble of distinctive buildings: to secure variety, the individual houses are articulated, depending on residential type, as individual but always corresponding structural parts.
Yesterday
Spinelli Living.Park.Quarter
Mannheim (DE)
SP1
The individual character of each house helps the residents to identify with their respective building and is expressed in the plinth zone through a mix of commercial and communal uses, from supermarket to bicycle repair shop. Formally, the seven buildings, articulated as pairs of siblings and named Gate House, Loft House, Top Dog, Slender Hans, House of Children, and Park House, rely on a variation of elements such as tiles, clinker, decorative plaster or trellises. While the pastel ensemble shows itself inspired, in outward appearance, both by the earthy tones of the Mannheim water
tower as well as the green of the surrounding area, the sandy and reddish color nuances of the former provide a conceptual thread that runs through all interiors. Most of the units are through apartments or double-aspect. Each house has two entrances: one from the street and one from the residential inner courtyard. The elevated courtyard makes for another defining design element of the quarter. Its green envelope gives the semipublic green oasis a special atmosphere and also zones the yard into areas of different degrees of privacy.
On the north and west sides, the green space connects to the
surrounding area through breaches in the perimeter block structure. The northern access area also
has a more formally articulated corner solution with public ground-floor use: the top(-dog) frog among frogs.
Visualization: Janousek & Havlicek, Illustrations: AllesWirdGut
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AllesWirdGut Architektur ZT GmbH
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AllesWirdGut Architektur ZT GmbH
Jahnstraße 18
80469 Munich, Germany
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