American settlement Perlacher Forest

The vastness. The vastness of the streets in particular. The clearly perceptible “park lanes.”

Closer research into the origins of the place reveals the reasons for these qualities. Casualness and familiarity in the neighborhood, in a foreign place. Cohesion despite the vastness, thanks to shared cultural references. This understanding of group and cohesion seems to have been transferred to the new residents over time. This represents a defining value of an existing neighborhood. Just as the trees have grown on the formerly almost bare cleared area and reinforce the existing atmosphere of a wide park, needs for urban space, amenities, and housing have also developed.

DESIGN

The result of these considerations meets all requirements for the development of the settlement. It accepts and develops the location with familiar typologies, maintaining the homogeneous, connecting horizon of uniform eaves. The strategy can be applied in phases. Buildings that have already been renovated will, of course, remain part of the settlement during the conversion phase.

Existing biotope areas are strengthened and can continue to develop. Existing streets remain spacious in terms of urban space, but accommodate different traffic densities and, while remaining the same width, are perceived as atmospherically differentiated as roads with bus traffic, access roads, or as cycle paths with a residential function. In addition, the design strengthens an existing network of paths. Depending on the situation and orientation, two new types of rows are positioned, “Balcony” or “Porch.” Access routes to the rows are retained. Free from emergency route requirements, they serve, for example in the “Porch” type, both as an interface to the addresses of the houses and as a transition zone along the terraces of the ground floor apartments, some of which are proposed as maisonettes. A casually familiar American motif of natural neighborliness emerges. The existing, listed building of the former casino is accepted as the center of the settlement and supplemented with open space.

Together with the new types of “Village Greens” and their public uses, such as daycare centers, small shops, and service and work units, as well as underground parking, this results in a genuine qualitative and quantitative advancement of collective life in a familiar atmosphere and neighborhood in the new Perlach Greens.