2008
Treehouses Bebelallee - Hamburg - Germany
The six apartment blocks were not only to receive a general overhaul - the owner also wanted to double the amount of living space and create more generous layouts overall. Blauraum thus extended the two-story row houses in height: the pitched roof was removed, and in its place came a lightweight, one- to one-and-a-halfstory construction.
To unify old with new, the architects designed new façades for the additions as well as for the existing buildings.
The yellow brickwork of the original buildings were exchanged for gray-toned bricks to correspond with the untreated Alaskan cedar wood shingles used to clad the new floors.
For the energy efficient renovations, the architects opted to forgo the use of external thermal insulation systems altogether.
Balconies that were originally covered in turquoise or yellow tiles now take on an almost archaic materiality through the use of hand-molded bricks and split wood shingles.
The architects dissolved the original interlocking of the balconies in order to straighten and streamline the façade.
Ultimately, it is both the vertical additions and the revised and partly remodeled original buildings that form a new unity, reformulating the entire neighborhood in Hamburg Bebelallee.