Conversion and extension of a historical ensemble for crafts and trades, entertainment and residences.

Arts and crafts

The Hamburger Hof complex presents itself today as a terrain genuinely grown and constantly re-combined by means of residential and commercial buildings over the last 200 year. On record since 1828, the front building was complemented over and over by additions on the courtyard side, establishing both small trade businesses as well as places of entertainment such as a bowling house. A bronze casting house, a coffee roastery, a brewery, locksmith and carpentry workshops, and various restaurants and bars were located here during the last two centuries, an addition to residential and small office units.

The client was fond of the idea to continue this mix of crafts, culture and housing when he acquired the property with the heterogeneous existing development in 2006. In close collaboration with the alert preservation authorities a renovation and expansion concept was developed solely removing two small sheds from the 1960ies. Generously glazed attics were sensibly added, partly resuming again the droop volume of the roofs that had been destroyed during World War II. The only completely new building within the ensemble is a five-story construction abutting an existing fire wall. On the top floor it protrudes widely into the retral adjacent park, while at the corner of the neighboring brick house shifting onto the old coffee roastery in respectful distance. New fenestrations on the upper floors of the complex offer spectacular views onto this "pocket park" and the surrounding houses, while the historic courtyard is recast by the new layout explicitly implementing modern materials and shapes and yet retaining its vintage character as a semi-private space.