Anchors of Community

Location: The housing project "Stadt.Land.Fluss" is in a village just outside of Hamburg, close to the Doverelbe. With public transport, it takes 35 – 45 Minutes to Hamburg’s central station.
Usage: Housing and community
Housing types: Saal: 2 levels and a basement, Gasthof: 3 levels, Gartenhaus: 3 levels
Prior usage: Saal: Community hall for the village, Gasthof: Restaurant, Gartenhaus: parking lot

2010: First meetings of the group wanting to form a housing project
2012: Year community around housing project hands in offer for property
2014: the housing project enters into the cooperative “wohnreform eG”
2015: the property is officially bought
2015 - 2017: Construction time:
2017: Move in of first residents

Number of apartments: 19
Apartment size: 50m² – 120m²
Number of inhabitants: 30 adults, 20 children
Common areas: 300 m²

The Laundry Room Did Not Turn Out as Planned

The rattle of the washing machines blares as music in the background, the air is filled with chatter and laughter. What was once planned as the simple laundry room in the housing project has over time become a place to chat, meet up and spend time together. Especially during the winter months, when the 30 adults of the project see each other less because they don’t accidentally bump into each other in the yard, the laundry room has transformed from a room that cleans clothes to a room that clears souls – it enables the residents (at least the ones who do not have an own washing machine and thus rely on the laundry room) to reconnect, talk about their days and revive the community.

When the housing project met up once to twice a week in the years following their original offer on the property in 2012 – a time in which the number of future residents was still growing to match the square meters of the planned buildings – to make decisions about how they would live together, what spaces they wished for and how they would organize themselves, the laundry room was not on the list of common spaces. Neither was the small front yard, which leads to some of the apartments. Instead, there was a lot of talk about the large backyard, which was planned as a common space. About the wood workshop, the music room, the common hall, the sports room.

This goes to say, not all the spaces that serve the housing project and its residents as spaces of community were planned as such. And more so, not every common space is for the same community. In total, three different levels of community should be considered, all of which are anchored through common spaces, such as the laundry room.

With the materials on the right, we invite you to get to know the housing project by exploring the different levels of community and the common spaces that anchor them. We hope, you enjoy uncovering the different layers of community through the different texts, drawings and floor plans, just was we did while collecting these materials.

Hudcová/Nicolaysen/Aliabadi/Korn/HCU 2026 – Lizenz: CC BY-NC-SA