This residential building, created within IBA Berlin 1987 framework as part of IBA Block 2, brought a brick cover to Dessauer Strasse. The 4-storey house has a passage in the middle, with balconies above it. The entrances are arranged to the right and left of the passage. The facade looks lively, with windows of different sizes. The courtyard facade is quieter in its window front.
In the back, the apartments have small gardens with terraces. The building consists of 24 residential units of different sizes. All tenants have communal areas in the basement. There is a common room with a kitchenette, a laundry room, and bicycle storage. Special emphasis was placed on a "living-room-kitchen", which exceeds the surface of the actual living room and includes entrance, dining and cooking area and corridor areas.
Myra Warhaftig and Emancipatory housing
In the catalog for 2012 exhibition "ReVision - IBA 1987", there is a special entry describing the origins of this project:"Myra Warhaftig had already made a contribution to the subject of emancipatory housing planning in 1978 with her dissertation entitled "The obstruction of emancipation of women by the way of dwelling and the possibility of overcoming it", written at the TU Berlin. It was based on the thesis that the transfer of upper-middle-class living environments to modern, smaller-scale housing construction had a restrictive effect on a modern family life, as it had placed the housewife, who replaced the upper middle-class maid, in the isolated spaces of home economics.
Participation in the >>Women's Block