This is what Eimsbüttel’s new urban quarter will look like – Duplex Architekten presents winning design

The structural design study for the planned city quarter between Unna- and Quickbornstraße has reached a successful conclusion: The winning design comes from Duplex Architekten. The renowned architectural firm based in Germany, Switzerland and France was able to convince the jury with a groundbreaking impulse for the transformation of the current commercial site into a lively urban quarter in the heart of Eimsbüttel and has now presented the designs to the public together with the project team.

A new urban quarter with around 800 apartments will be built in the coming years on the approximately 34,000-square-meter site in the middle of one of Hamburg’s most popular neighborhoods, where the Beiersdorf company has been at home for more than 130 years. The owner and developer is TROMA Alters- und Hinterbliebenenstiftung, Beiersdorf’s pension fund. The project is being developed by Beiersdorf Immobilienentwicklungs GmbH. This development will be made possible by the relocation of Beiersdorf AG’s current corporate headquarters to the new Beiersdorf Campus on Troplowitzstrasse. 

“For us, the picture is now sharpening of what the planned urban quarter will look like. Duplex has engaged with future residents and provided suggestions on how different life models can be represented. This fits in well with the existing neighborhood,” says Peter Wenzel, managing director of TROMA.

“Duplex’s architects have developed a contribution based on an interplay between the different urban spaces and the inner logic of the houses,” sums up Dr. Stefan Best, Managing Director of Beiersdorf Immobilienentwicklungs GmbH, adding, “the design shows great diversity in design and extremely multifaceted floor plan typologies, which clearly characterize the individual houses and are in parts novel for the surrounding area.”

Ten planning teams from all over Germany and Switzerland had been commissioned in April 2022 to develop the architectural guidelines for the new urban quarter. The basis for the overall design concept had already been created by the planning team from ASTOC Architects and Planners GmbH together with LAND Germany GmbH, both from Düsseldorf, in the urban planning/open space planning expert review process in 2019. Another essential working basis were the results that citizens had produced since 2018 as part of the citizen participation “Stadtmacherei Eimsbüttel” in numerous workshops, surveys and contributions. This time, too, citizens were given the opportunity to get to know the ten designs and give their feedback in a public feedback workshop before the jury meeting. Well over 600 comments were given to the jury for their decision. Since 2019, the drawn citizen representatives have accompanied the process with their suggestions and given the citizens of Eimsbüttel a voice in the jury sessions.

Now that the structural design phase has been completed, the participating architectural firms will further refine the winning design together with the district, TROMA and Beiersdorf in order to set the course for implementation. The first demolitions are scheduled to start in 2024, with the first apartments ready for occupancy in 2027.

Comprehensive information on the project can be found on the website www.stadtmacherei-eimsbuettel.de.