Berlin: Apartment Building Scharoun Hohenzollerndamm

1929 – 1931

Architects: Hans Scharoun, Georg Jacobowitz

Hohenzollerndamm 35–36, Mansfelder Strasse 29, Berlin

Between 1929 and 1931, Hans Scharoun built a housing complex on Hohenzollerndamm in Berlin for bachelors and married couples without children.

The project’s client was the entre­preneur Georg Jacobowitz, whose firm developed the floor plans of the individual 35 to 70 square meter apartment types.

Jacobowitz was an architect, landscape architect and construction business owner. He built apartment buildings and housing complexes in the Berlin districts of Tiergarten, Charlottenburg and Treptow, among others. In 1933 he emigrated to Palestine.

The apart­ments with kitchen or kitchenette and bathroom give the impression of concen­trated repre­sen­tation and domestic organiz­ation in a very small space.

The listed building consists of two parallel panes (street side and courtyard side) that are offset from each other in a half-story fashion.

With the balconies projecting semicir­cu­larly like hinges, Scharoun designed an organic connection between the two street-side wings.

After completion, the smooth plaster was given a coat of white oil paint, which gave the surface a delicate transparency.

The sharp conciseness of the plaster edges in contrast to the rounded window reveals, as well as the interplay of light plaster surfaces, dark clinker base, and blue window timbers, show the archi­tect’s intense attention to detail.