BAUGRUPPE ON THE SPREE ISABELLA WHITEHILL & SHAWN SULLIVAN
SITE PLAN 1:500
The Spree provided crucial transportation in Oberschoneweide’s industrial days, but now the connection between the community and the river has largely been lost. It’s importance and beauty is hidden behind the former AEG industrial buildings and neglected as an asset for the community. By building a baugruppe community directly on the river on re-purposed and retrofitted industrial barges, we hope to regain this lost connection and provide an alluring public space. The complex consists of 4 barges: one with a piano salon and workshop, another with multi-use flex spaces, and two with apartment unitys. They are connected by a promenade along the river that links the pedestrian and vehicle bridges and provides docks for boat parking. Placing the piano salon barge adjacent to the plaza reactivates the space by giving it a new purpose. Seating steps on the top of the promenade along with the plaza itself become an extension of the concert hall for public, open-air concerts and other events. The flex spaces are built along a grid system allowing for maximum adaptation depending on the tenants and features a semi-public programmed outdoor space that meanders along two levels of the barge. The apartment barges feature spaces for 1-2 people, 3-4 people, or 6-8 people. Each has an outdoor terrace, and lush gardens provide privacy. Passerby on the promenade can get a glimpses of the river though openings between the apartments. The flex barge and piano barge are designed to be mobile so that they could be moved to a different location within Berlin or even a different city all together. We also explored possibilities for expanding our system to other cities. All four barges feature PV panels and marine thermal heating/cooling system that is supplemented by pellet boilers in the cold months. The promenade is also lined with a modular system of floating plants that clean the water. The main sustainable aspect is that we repurpose old shipping barges, and thus economic value is added by the gact that no land mush be purchased. This savings could allow for the construction of our proposed public promenade that would help to revitalize Oberschoneweide’s connection to the Spree.