The Heimatmole joint building venture is a group of clients who combine living and freelance work in one building. To guide the project, three key principles were defined – serving both as the overarching goals of the collective and as concepts to be translated in built space:

"Mooring" is understood in a dual sense: as an investment of financial resources and as the laying of a foundation for a unique and forward-looking project.

"Arriving" reflects the community’s openness to all, creating spaces that accommodate a wide range of lifestyles. It also means promoting the synergetic coexistence of work and life, comfort and energy efficiency, family and individual households as well as the young and the elderly within a single residential neighbourhood.

For Heimatmole, being able to "stay" in all situations and phases of life is the basis for a physical home. This enables a spatially flexible, cross-generational and energetically sustainable residential concept.

Taking housing construction into one's own hands

Based on the awareness that the demands on living, especially in combination with working, are changing, a spatial programme was developed that enables the apartments to interact with so-called "switch rooms". Switch rooms are flexible extension areas that can be ‘switched’ onto the individual apartments. The small, flexibly assignable and self-sufficient units are also accessible via the stairwell and are thus open to temporary flatmates.