Eco-Houses

"Thinking in fixed objects is much riskier than thinking in open processes. Fixed entities remove all possibilities for future change and are unable to adapt the past."

Realized in the context of the international building exhibition (IBA-Neu) in Berlin, “Eco-Houses” can be understood as a strategy for increasing buildable land in the city. Concrete frames with two plateaus, each at a height of 6 and 12 meters, are built around 25 trees. 

The over-dimensioned support structure allows future residents to build their units individually. Installation shafts run along the pillars that carry the structural load into point foundations, in order to reduce the footprint on the ground. 

The special features of this project, besides the support structure, were the consideration of ecological construction methods for each house and the insertion of the project on an ecologically valuable plot of land.

After contructing the concrete framework, Frei Otto handed over the planning responsibility to the users, who then started to build the 18 housing-units themselves or commissioned other architects to do it.

Managed by many different agents, the construction required a lot of coordination, which lead to high costs. Due to a lack of legislative and contractual tools, the management of the common structures, like the concrete frame and stairs, resulted in conflicts. 

The "Eco-Houses" illustrate how individual housing is possible even in a multi-storey building, without compromising on collective or ecological aspects. The project serves as a successful solution to the exiling of single-families to Berlin's outskirts. 

Moreover the collective design process was a positive attempt at questioning the often one-dimensional roles of both architects and inhabitants in the building process.

"It took us 30 years to shift our way of understanding and to find out that these systems, technically and ecologically, are nested within each other on very different scales of space and time."