Palotti House, STUTTGART
The so-called Palotti House belongs to a mixed residential area with a total of eight buildings, where housing for asylum seekers and refugees with recognized status will be built.
Status | Type of residents |
Number of residents | Modular units |
Building method | Country |
Architect | Commissioned by |
Post migrant city development
In the accommodation of refugees the City of Stuttgart is pursuing a concept it calls the “Stuttgart way”. This involves decentralised placement in the urban districts: never more than 250 people at one location, care by independent organisations, one care person for 68 residents, help by volunteers. At the end of November 6,231 refugees were living in 94 shelters in 21 Stuttgart districts.
The idea of accommodating asylum seekers in individual residential areas is also being pursued by the Siedlungswerk, a housing association with an ecclesiastical background that constructs 400 to 500 dwelling units per year in Baden-Württemberg. By its own account, for many years the Siedlungswerk, whose principal owners are the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, has been developing residential projects in which all segments of society and all age groups find a home. In Stuttgart-Birkach, where the disused church of St Vinzenz Pallotti from the 1960s is located, a mixed residential neighbourhood is planned with living space for asylum seekers and refugees with the right of abode. In all eight buildings are to be erected on a 8,500 m2 site: six with a total of 64 condominiums, a three-storey structure for an extended day-care centre and the so-called Palotti House with accommodation for 60 asylum seekers, refugees and students.
Schwarz.Jacobi Architects won the competition in July with the proposal to give the Pallotti House the same architectural treatment as the other buildings, both with respect to the façade design and its urban location – on equal terms on the main thoroughfare through the neighbourhood. The building was designed as a house, not a hostel. A total of 74 people can live in group accommodation (1st to 3rd floor) and subsidized housing (4th and top floor). Should the demand for housing for asylum seekers slacken in a few years, the units can be converted to one unit for fewer residents. The purpose of the Pallotti House is to promote or assume the social function in the neighbourhood. A common room on the ground floor which can also be used for children’s parties and similar is proposed for the purpose.
Parallel to this, the Siedlungswerk is developing a further housing area for about 800 residents in Neuhausen auf den Fildern. In addition to plots for private homes and row houses and 155 condominium apartments, “Wohnen an den Akademiegärten” will also include 35 rental apartments, supplemented by residential group models and an integrative residential models for refugees with a meeting room for whole neighbourhood.
Text: Friederike Meyer,
aus: Stadtbauwelt 48.2015
