The single-family home remains Germany's most desired housing type—53% of people dream of owning one. It's also the most prevalent: over 16 million houses account for roughly half of all residential units. Yet despite the fact that most of these homes house only 1.8 people on average, their numbers continue to climb steadily, growing by approximately 100,000 annually over the past two decades. Today, however, this beloved housing model faces mounting scrutiny. The climate crisis, acute housing shortages, and evolving lifestyles have exposed critical drawbacks: the material, energy, and land consumption it demands is simply too high, while its rigid spatial layout and ownership structures lack the flexibility our future demands.

Against this backdrop, TU Berlin's Co-MaKaBi design studio takes a different approach to the single-family home's future: rather than building new, they advocate for sharing and transforming what already exists. Working in Germany's largest single-family home district—the Berlin neighborhoods of Mahlsdorf, Kaulsdorf, and Biesdorf (MaKaBi)—students began by surveying the inherent qualities of the existing housing stock and mapping everyday sharing practices. This research laid the groundwork for identifying untapped potential for denser, more vibrant, and genuinely communal living.

Building on these insights and working directly with residents, the team developed expanded models of shared living—centered on the idea of pooling spaces and community resources. For key residential areas, they crafted spatial concepts that enrich the existing fabric with new programs, shared amenities, and diverse housing types. A critical constraint they set for themselves: no new land sealing. The focus remained on robust, adaptable spatial solutions that work hand-in-hand with energy retrofit strategies. Crucially, they also proposed community-based ownership and financing models as compelling alternatives to private ownership.

The project's goal is ambitious: develop long-term, implementable solutions that slash per-capita resource use while simultaneously raising socio-spatial quality. Unlike new construction, retrofitting existing single-family neighborhoods demands new tools, fresh thinking, and shared knowledge—insights the exhibition brings to light. Detached houses for everyone! functions as a transformation laboratory, asking a vital question: How can these established single-family neighborhoods become testing grounds for an urgent new retrofit practice, and in doing so, fuel critical architectural discourse and innovation?

Location

Architecture Gallery Berlin
Karl-Marx-Allee 96
10243 Berlin

www.architekturgalerieberlin.de