<translation>Baugruppe</translation>

A Baugruppe is a group of people who pool their finances and resources to build their own housing. Unlike foreign examples, however, this time we did not construct a new building for the Baugruppe but transformed an urban villa.

Living in one's own historic, yet individually reconstructed house with a garden, just a few steps from the metro station, is a dream that only a very few families with small children can afford to fulfill. However, when three such families combined their efforts to buy a three-story villa before renovation, it became clear to us that this was a very interesting experiment. And that instead of a utopia, it must be a rational path not only to realization but also to the operation of this type of housing. From our perspective, it was essential to harness the synergy of joint investment while also preventing future conflicts in the cohabitation of the house's residents in the long term.

Therefore, in each floor, we designed a completely individual apartment for each family, even at the cost of multiple risers and structural interventions. We excavated and deepened the basement to establish shared spaces for laundry, cellars, and technical facilities, which also includes a shared clubhouse. The three terraces connect the residents vertically.

We approached the house as it was originally intended – as the first among equals – dominating the row of houses in the block. Thus, we illuminated the gable into symmetry with new window openings and restored its tectonic poetry, which had been lost due to earlier insulation.

The design of the garden complements the overall concept of this urban housing. We demolished the garage and built three separate capacity bike storages in its place with a small shared storage for gardening tools. We raised the two-tone fencing of the garden by one brick to ensure more privacy for the garden while not limiting the public space in front of it.

The individual apartments were treated in the spirit of the house itself, translated into the distinctive living language of the individual families. The result, we believe, responds to their own lifestyle both as a whole and in more intimate details. Sometimes it’s about the preferred way of washing hair, other times about the color of the bar in a favorite café, or perhaps about a beloved mountain panorama, communal activities, or just a cheerful trauma from previous housing.

As far as we can judge, co-living suits the clients, or more precisely, their mutual coexistence does not limit them in any way. One small piece of evidence might be that they still hold each other's keys. On the other hand, we are confident that this is supported by the generosity and perspective of each of them, which is by no means a given.