Lyoner Quarter, Frankfurt am Main

The future of a city is dependent on its ability to adapt to continuously changing social, economic, and cultural conditions. The central tasks of municipal urban planning include recognising these changes as early as possible, dealing with them on a conceptual level, and planning appropriately for them.

The situation in Frankfurt am Main – as also in many other prosperous metropolitan regions – is marked by a worsening housing shortage on the one hand and extensive structural vacancies in office buildings on the other. In the face of limited land resources within the city limits, the city is increasingly dependent on conversion and densification measures for the creation of new living space.

And complex developments in difficult locations are also moving into focus, as here in the Niederrad business district with its current population of about 15,000 employees. With the transformation of the monostructured office district into a mixed-use neighbourhood, a challenge that is previously unprecedented in Germany is being addressed, requiring cooperation and combined action by everyone involved. The “Lyoner Quarter” framework thereby not only demonstrates the spatial potentials, but also offers a diversity of approaches for new development models and techniques.

This project was presented in the first Baukultur Workshop in 2014.