Van B is designed to cater to changing demographics and multiple family constellations. With its highly flexible apartments, outdoor and shared communal spaces and striking facade, the residence offers a new form of city living.
It offers a completely new form of ‘smart’ living; it involves reinterpreting ideas from the digital world in order to improve the analogue, physical spaces we inhabit. Individual spaces in our homes have had to become multifunctional, serving as offices, gyms, living rooms and sleeping nooks, all at the same time. Now, more than ever before, we need to develop new living concepts that cater to the changing demands of our homes.
Van B introduced new ways to make the footprint of an apartment more flexible. The project challenges the old convention of square footage and fixed footprints, empowering its inhabitants to live in more flexible ways. The flexibility lies in the fact that each element can work in different configurations and that the resident can choose an individual configuration of plugins based on a catalogue of nine elements.
An adaptable partition and furniture ‘plugin-based’ system was designed to allow homeowners to use the space in a 40 sq m apartment almost as if it were a 60 sq m loft. The plugin system allows residents to easily change the use of the same floor space, making it possible to transform a room from a generous office into a living room, or a bedroom.
A grid was devised upon which each element is based, as whenever one element is opened, the back of the other one needs to be adjacent to it; this means that no matter which elements the homeowner chooses, and no matter how they arrange them inside their apartment, the modules will work together.
The project offers a variety of apartment types and sizes including one to three room apartments, flats, gallery lofts and rooftop flats.
In the apartments, the large bay windows and balconies create visual connections between the street, the homes and the trees that line the road. The bay windows also serve to provide the building with a sculptural three dimensional shell.
In the apartments from the first to the fifth floor, the living space expands from within, enabling 180° cityscape views while retaining privacy for the neighbours.
With their glazed facades, the gallery lofts that face the courtyard on the ground floor invite residents to open up their apartments and extend their living rooms into the garden. The voids that span over all three levels create unique spatial configurations. Having their own address, these triple height apartments almost work as small houses nestled within the building.
The project also provides a roof terrace that is open to all residents, alongside communal kitchen lounges that provide space for entertaining, working and socialising outside of the home. There is also a fitness patio, bike repair station, alongside car and bike sharing services.
The Van B project fulfills all of the strict sustainability regulations in Germany. In addition, parts of the foundation and basement structure from the previous building were re-used for the new building and the basement walls were reinforced. The roof garden also serves to cool the building, while the bay windows are orientated to optimise daylight in the apartments.