Tower block, Hamburg

Title image © Markus Tollhopf

Living is dwelling, lingering, ideally being happy to put down roots. Can something that is essentially immobile force us to reconsider it? Yes, it can. And yes, it actually needs to – considering the socio-ecological challenges that our community is facing.

For climate change efforts to be successful, how the community deals with existing buildings is particularly important. Long-term resource protection will only be achievable if we find a way to preserve as many existing buildings as possible and continue to use them intensively.

This poses a major challenge, especially for the often unloved, often quickly build post-war buildings or large settlements of the 1960s and 1970s. With this is mind, the transformation of the tower block at Kiwittsmoor 32 in Hamburg-Langenhorn is a successful transformation project and a good example of how it can be done.

With care and a skillful interplay of fine nuances, the planners and contractors managed to give this neglected child of the 1960s an elegant new face. The light and friendly base shade of the color design, the good shading of creme-white and sandy hues in contrast with the gray framed glazing, give the house a new elegance and value. The juxtaposition between listels and the rendered facade reinforces the cube forms of the existing building and offers enough play to catch the eye without appearing too superficial.

With this new charm, the building can look forward to the next decades at ease.

It shows how skill and intuition can lead to beautiful preservation.