New build - GWG München

Horst W. Opaschowski's study "Germany 2030. How we will
live in the future" (2008) demonstrates just how accurately
this project is responding to the needs of society. The future
researcher writes that people’s desire for community is unbroken
despite the increase in individualisation: "Everybody under
one roof - but everyone for themselves. A form of living that is
as communicative as it is individual, which allows you to be by
yourself and helps to prevent you from being abandoned."
Even if Opaschowski is clearly focusing on shared housing for
senior citizens, he still presents reference points that are of relevance
to an extra-familial dialogue between the generations.
And it goes yet further. It can be seen when comparing the
last few years, for instance, that “people are getting ready for
a new form of domesticity, feeling at home in familiar surroundings,”
sums up Opaschowski and concludes, “more and
more people are reflecting on the family and having their own
four walls as a hive of stability.” Viewed against this background,
the self-determined treatment of ageing, infirmity and
community will take its place within the core of the future social
order.
Help as a service, community as an option, and freedom as a
basic requirement, this is how one could sum up the basic
principle of a communal residence for senior citizens – as a
voluntary community that offers contacts and exchanges but
remains rooted in the idea that people come together as and
when they wish to. Such a community also tolerates retreat, if
this is what some members wish.
Each communal residence comprises individual apartments
with a shower and small kitchen plus additional communal
facilities, such as a large kitchen/living room, a lounge and an
adjacent loggia. They also include a bath and washroom plus
an additional room for guests or carers.
Since it is oriented to the south and to the green courtyard,
the living rooms enjoy plenty of light and sun. Residents have
everything within their view and remain involved in the goings
on in the community. Can’t the children sometimes be an
annoyance when they run around and shout in the garden?
“Not necessarily,” says the responsible GWG München project
manager. “The people who move in here do so voluntarily,
so anyone who lives here is here because they wants to be.”
And it is this voluntary factor that creates the opportunities for
a form of living that many have already experienced in their
younger days.
Living together in a small area, with the option to withdraw
every now and then – this dual relationship of openness and
retreat is already signalled by the long and wide south-facing
balcony in front of all six apartments, which while connecting
them into a structural whole, includes light partitions to maintain
privacy between neighbouring units.
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The renovation area:
Sendling-Westpark
9
Garmischer Strasse
9
8
Hinterbärenbadstrasse
Krüner Strasse