M1 Townhouse, Freiburg Vauban

As well as being famously sunny, Freiburg is also well-known for being earnestly “green”. Its commitment to renewable energies and ambitious environmental policies have turned it into a veritable green city over the years. The borough of Vauban on the southern outskirts of Freiburg is particularly outstanding in this respect. The former French barracks there have, since 1994, gradually made way for a new Vauban of low-energy residential standards and “passive” houses. The green estate was augmented in 2013 by the M1 Townhouse by Berlin-based architects Barkow Leibinger. The two-part ensemble comprises Freiburg’s first integrative hotel plus a residential-cum-commercial building with select appointments.

The townhouse blends in well with its environs from an ecological point of view. The underlying reinforced-concrete skeleton structure is concealed by prefabricated timber-frame building elements. Lo-tech is certainly what the façade design is all about: straightforward function, straightforward manufacture, developed with sustainability in mind. Locally prevalent silver fir combined with vertically attached cedarwood fins define the façade’s appearance. On the south wall, 25 species of plant ramble up towards the roof edge along steel cords and, in the course of time, will project the green image outwards ever more forcefully.

The bonds between building and Nature are growing; the townhouse is shown to be rooted in Nature and in this way lends expression to its sustainable method of construction. Ecological orientation, innovation and formal creativity are the key virtues of the M1 Townhouse, virtues for which FSB, too, stands. In their totality, FSB’s door handles ally themselves with the M1 Townhouse to form a sustainable mix of ingenious lo-tech construction and common-sense hi-tech, allowing a piece of tomorrow to take shape today.

Photos: Zooey Braun