Weltquartier, Hamburg

They’ve come to stay: 1,700 people, 770 apartments, 31 nations, and 6 years in Wilhelmsburg’s Weltquartier (Global Neighbourhood).

The former 1920s/1930s shipyard workers’ quarter in the southern part of the Reiherstieg district, which belongs to the SAGA GWG municipal housing association, was in urgent need of refurbishment due to its outdated floor plans and the dilapidated state of its apartments. This gave occasion in 2007 to extensively modernise and restructure the district with its more than 800 apartments in the following years as part of Hamburg’s International Architecture Exhibition (IBA) – giving special consideration to the multicultural nature of the local residents there.

Central elements of this process were therefore, to find building responses to the needs of this international group of residents; on the one hand by integrating their differing lifestyles into the concept and, on the other, by highlighting possibilities to bridge conflicts caused by the close proximity of residential and commercial utilisations. A side issue and important aim of all IBA projects was energy refurbishment and the use of renewable energies.

Beginning with a comprehensive, innovative and multilingual process of participation, over a period of more than seven years approximately 750 residential units were newly built or converted in line with plans from seven architectural offices, and 35 commercial units were created in the future Welt-Gewerbehof (World Business Courtyard). The otherwise usual process of displacement that is experienced during such measures did not happen. More than three-quarters of the local residents have remained in the district and a majority have returned to the area where rents have stayed at almost exactly the same level.

This project was discussed at the first Baukultur Workshop in 2014.