ALL live! - Model Project for Homeless People in Berlin

„Kreuz und Quer“ is a model project for homeless people in Berlin, Kreuzberg, which follows the principle of the „housing first-concept“. The near-ground floors and the garden are open for the public to get in touch. The architecture is based on the use of reclaimed material and the idea of highly identifiable homes from the outside and equality inside.

„Kreuz und Quer“ is a pilot project for homeless people in Berlin, Kreuzberg which follows the principle of the „housing first-concept“. The name „Kreuz und Quer“ - means more or less „criss and cross“ - connects the location Kreuzberg, an highly urban and heterogenic part of Berlin, with the appearance of the building and its community. Everyone can be suddenly endangered to loose one’s home under certain circumstances. Therefore homelessness is a topic that should not be lost in the noise. In consequence the house transports the topic into the everyday life. The first two floors under the gable roofs and the garden are open for the public. The garden offers a critical hub with public bathrooms, a greenhouse and a farm shop. The spatial program inside includes a kindergarden, studios and a multifunctional space in connection with an internet café. The second floor inhabits space for the housing community like playrooms and a city balcony. The internet café sits in between a biotope for plants and insects. The structure of the upper floors makes it possible to identify individual flats. The fact that the outside is various - whereas the apartments in the inside are very equal - can be seen in a metaphorical way. The „Kreuz und Quer“ offers four different types of apartments: A single apartment, a single room in a cluster, a family apartment and a handicapped accessible apartment. The primary construction is made out of recyceled concrete following the cradle-to-cradle-concept. Furthermore reclaimed materials are used as well for the building’s envelopes. The facades and the window sizes could very, dependent on the ongoing search of materials in the building process. Nevertheless, the design of the house is set and the facades can be seen as the target of the following process. In addition with green surfaces and a biotope, passive strategies and solar panels on top of the saddle roofs, the „Kreuz und Quer“ stands for an intact environment. We all don’t want to live somehow, but seek our own place in the world. The „Kreuz und Quer“ offers the possibility to make the way back into society, which is - lastly - a home.