LIVING

Dear Readers,

in true local patriotism, we had our fingers crossed for the John Cranko School by Burger Rudacs Architekten in Stuttgart, but the jury of the DAM Prize 2022 decided otherwise: first prize in the annual competition organised by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum went to Arge Summacumfemmer with Juliane Greb for the cooperative housing project San Riemo in Munich’s Riem district! This winning project, a building for 100 residents with flats that can grow and shrink according to need, may also be considered a sign of the importance currently attached to housing construction. The competitors were certainly renowned and their projects spectacular … but that is not what housing construction is currently all about. When selecting the projects for this issue on housing, we deliberately left out the opulent solutions, focusing instead on projects characterised by intelligent interventions, sophisticated colour and material schemes and an economical use of space. We found exemplary solutions such as the flats in Cascais (Portugal), Cape Town and Biarritz, creating most appealing living spaces of only 24 to 55 square metres. Even when architects plan their own homes, they do so economically and pragmatically, but not without the aforementioned sophistication, as the projects in Berlin and London demonstrate. The flats in Berlin, Milan and Viladecans (Spain), the new holiday home in Menzenschwand and the redesigned family area in London have succeeded in meeting the individual requirements of their future residents. Bonell+Dòriga have taken on a special task: with great sensitivity and respect for the existing building, they succeeded in upgrading a flat in the gigantic Walden 7 complex, implemented by the recently deceased Ricardo Bofill near Barcelona in the early 1970s. And the eerily beautiful photographic stagings by Gregory Crewdson show that living can not only be a dream but can also trigger nightmarish sensations!

Best wishes
Petra Stephan, Dipl.-Ing.
Chief Editor
Architect