Henry Koerner Hall Student Residence / Atelier Kempe Thill | ArchDaily

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Pankow-Niederschönhausen is nearby

It is characterized by an open urban structure, large green private gardens and streets full of trees. With the passage of time, the originally expected closed and dense urban blocks have not yet been realized in the entire area, but they can still be found on its edges. Instead, the community is dominated by the development of informal urban villas, semi-detached and single-family houses, which can be called "urban suburbs." In the era of the German Democratic Republic, embassies of many countries were erected there, which resulted in a delicate balance between housing and public functions. The former embassy was designed in a modern style, all standing on a spacious land with a park-like garden. After the reunification of Germany, Pankow's embassy building was no longer needed, and it turned out to be empty.

Bard College

This is a German-American University of Arts and Social Sciences that originated in Annandale, New York and has been operating since 2003

Branch in the context of this urban planning. After the reunification of Germany, the college did not establish a separate campus for this purpose, but obtained some empty embassy buildings and absorbed existing residential buildings. Since the available buildings are relatively small, this approach to integration in urban areas may seem impractical at first glance.

Nonetheless, the short distance between the buildings can still be reorganized well. Similar to the situation at the embassy in the past, student activities have gradually been incorporated into the community. The college incorporates an open urban structure and urban population

Pankow created this new campus model. Henry Koerner's new building follows this logic of slow mixing and connects its size to the loose development surrounding it. For this reason, the building has a scaled volume so that it is not considered as a whole over its entire length. Its modernist architecture deliberately tries to connect with the architecture of the former East German embassy. The combination of the architecture of the house and the facade along the street deliberately breaks through the plain and informal environment of the area and highlights the openness of the college.

The cafeteria at Bard College is located in a former embassy building south of the auditorium. The two buildings form a whole. These two properties are closely connected to each other, creating an attractive small park between them, which residents can use as picnics, study groups and any other outside activities. 

The problem is always the apartment: how to give each apartment its personality and characteristics. Small villas with two-story high void spaces are very suitable for this because they give residents the feeling of living in a single-family home. For student housing units, the problem of wise size increases with student housing. How much should a group of students live together in order to have a sense of community and responsibility for shared spaces (such as kitchens and bathrooms)?

An important topic of Henry Koerner Hall is the long-term flexibility and deformability of buildings. Bard College has discovered that it is important that the family can use the apartment or eventually sell it. The size of the residential units in Henry Kona Hall depends on the fact that they are considered mansions and each mansion can accommodate up to six students. In the long main bar, all apartments have a spacious two-story open space. Every two apartments are stacked on top of each other. The lower one can be accessed directly from the outside via a path on the back of the property, while the upper one can be reached via the gallery on the back. This combination creates a typological difference: you can enter the living room directly from the outside to the lower apartment, and then use the indoor stairs to reach the bedroom on the first floor. In the upper-floor cottage, you enter the top floor and use the internal stairs to reach the living room downstairs.

In both cases, the two-story high-altitude space can be seen visually from the staircase connected to the living room, thereby forming a strong spatial feature with a strong line of sight. All living rooms have open kitchens. In a smaller space, put it back to the back, and you will find an apartment on each lower floor and a large duplex apartment on the upper two floors without the two-story high void space. The large windows greatly expand the internal space visually and provide them with a spacious space, which can produce positive reflections in the primary school room. Most importantly, the shining trees standing on the front and back of the building are framed by large windows and become part of the interior.

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