Next in our series of roundups presenting houses from different US states, it’s New York‘s turn. The Empire State’s top rural residences include a Hamptons home shaded with strips of canvas and a secluded writer’s retreat (+ slideshow). (more…)
This article was originally published on Business Insider as “Hitler’s 3-mile-long abandoned Nazi resort is transforming into a luxury getaway.”
Three years before Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of the world’s largest tourist resort, located on a beachfront property on the island of Rügen. The Nazis called it Prora.
Capable of holding more than 20,000 residents at a single time, Prora was meant to comfort the weary German worker who toiled away in a factory without respite. According to historian and tour guide Roger Moorhouse, it was also meant to serve as the carrot to the stick of the Gestapo—a pacifying gesture to get the German people on Hitler’s side.
But then World War II began, and Prora’s construction stalled—until now.
In 1936, Germany was still enmeshed in the concept of “people’s community,” or volksgemeinschaft, from World War I. It was a sense that Germans stood united, no matter what. While the Nazi police state was in development, the overarching German vision was a hopeful one, Moorhouse tells Business Insider. “And this is where something like Prora comes in.”
Over the next three years, more than 9,000 workers erected a 2.7-mile-long building out of brick and concrete. Its practicality was dwarfed by its grandness. Moorhouse calls it “megalomania in stone.”
“The photos cannot physically do it justice,” Moorhouse says. “It’s too big.” By all accounts, it would have been one of the most impressive structures in the world.
But as the Third Reich began its devastating march through Europe, workers returned to their factories and Prora fell by the wayside.
It became a shell of building, a failed Nazi dream left to decay for the next several decades, until 2013, when German real-estate company Metropole Marketing bought the rights to refurbish Prora and build it up as luxury summer homes and a full-time apartment complex.
The new homes will take up several of the structure’s eight blocks, split between the Prora Solitaire Home and Prora Solitaire Hotel Apartments and Spa.
Metropole expects to finish the entire restoration by 2022, though both the apartment units and summer homes are already for sale.
Prora’s block of apartments opened earlier this summer. To buy one of the units, you’ll need to shell out between $400,000 and $725,000. It all depends on how much space you’ll need. Penthouse suites, like the one above, will run on the pricier end, while more modest units like the one below will be less expensive.
In all cases, the design aesthetic tends toward the modern. Regardless of size or cost, buildings all feature glass elevators, heated floors, and laundry facilities. And all beach-facing units will give residents sweeping views of the Baltic Sea.
They can also take advantage of the complex’s spa and swimming pools, not to mention the extensive outdoor garden.
While these amenities are certainly appealing, given the location’s history and its distance from Berlin — about three hours by car — Moorhouse has his doubts that people will want to spend time there.
The structure, conceived right on the brink of global chaos, could end up flopping a second time, tainted by its first failed vision.
Or it could thrive as a destination in a world where Nazi occupation continues to fade into history.
This story, by Chris Weller, was originally published on Business Insider. Check out other great content at Business Insider, such as:
From the architect. A plot of land sloping downward into the sea. A rugged atmosphere of native pines and acacias. The open sky and the see merging into the horizon. Such was the scenery from were Roland House’s project began.
Even though the commissioner’s program called for a typical summer house that satisfied the usual needs, it also had some peculiarities. Both social and private areas had to be organized on a single floor, except for a single independent space: the main suite integrated with a room for working and reading, a bathroom, and its own exclusive terrace.
And that is how the house was built. Two bedrooms and an expansive yet unified living-dining-cooking area set on the ground floor while above, more independently, stands the master suite and the studio-library requested by the client.
A pure and solid exposed concrete prism, half buried into the sand dunes almost like a railway carriage abandoned in a desert, became a living artifact.
Floating above the street level, this volume produces a semi covered area that serves as a parking place. From this area, a two-story high narrow passage, fixed between to walls, directs towards the entrance, from where the space opens up into the house’s ample and luminous ground floor.
The facade at the front opens up to the surroundings. Rising from the natural terrain, the first floor protrudes the box and expands towards the outside. Encircled by the canopies of the pines and the acacias, it presents itself as a space for sensitive intimacy. Its terrace, however, surpasses the canopies and allows for views of the sea and the horizon.
The facade at the back, mostly blind, becomes the dune’s retaining wall where the volume penetrates the terrain, and lodges the service areas. At the same time, it hosts the vertical circulation that starts at the ground level and goes all the way up through the first floor drawing a single straight line.
The study of the proportions between the heights and the dimensions of the inner spaces, along with the decision to produce linear openings on the walls—thus avoiding full height windows—looked to emphasize the building’s horizontality and to lower the visual impact of the bar-like volume, in an attempt to achieve a respectful dialogue with the environment.
This spatiality inside allowed a centrifugal effect for the senses, directing the views through big glazed openings towards the outside into the natural surroundings. There was an attempt to conceive the house not as a complete object per se, but as a means to achieve enjoyment instead.
Most of the furniture was built in exposed concrete. The dining and the cooking areas are separated by a hanging partition, intersected by a horizontal pane that becomes a kitchen countertop and a dining table. While the partition gives the kitchen some privacy, the countertop and the table connect it with the living-dining area. These three elements were thought and built as a monolithic single object made out of concrete. This matter’s malleability allowed for it to be conceived as an autonomous piece, able to articulate the different spaces with its synthetic potentiality.
Passive solar control devices were used. On the one hand, the walls of the first floor fold when they reach the ceiling and become an overhanging that protects the inside from the effects of the sun. On the other, for the same reasons, the floor slab prolongs to float over the ground floor.
House Roland intended to reassure itself as an object in its own environment, to belong to the scenery as a part of it and, at the same time, to own it. It was our intention to make this work of architecture and Costa Esmeralda’s natural atmosphere to vibrate in harmony.
MawsonKerr Architects‘ Low Rise High Density has been selected as the winner of the RIBA Journal Sterling OSB Habitat Award. The house proposal, in the Byker area of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, uses prefabrication and CNC techniques to confront issues of substance abuse and addiction.
Designed to be constructed quickly, easily, and by unskilled laborers, the single occupant houses and bungalows can be stacked or arranged side-by-side, coming together to form a low-rise, high-density community. This arrangement accommodates 115 homes per hectare, which each include their own front doors and private external spaces.
The design is based on modular units made with 8 sheets of OSB and allows for prefabricated window and door openings, kitchen units, and storage solutions. The interiors are lined with lacquered OSB for a simple aesthetic that contrasts with the external cladding material.
MawsonKerr understood that you can create a bespoke component from a sheet of OSB and a CNC machine and make that component interesting and useful, while performing several tasks at once, said judge Tim Lucas.
The architects aim for the construction of the prefabricated building components to become a community project, empowering individuals to gain control and pride in ownership of their homes. A panel system allows for customizability of both interior and exterior; meanwhile, the modular approach allows for an efficient use of space. The energy-efficient shell and low-rise design also bring natural light to all areas of the home, overall providing affordable and sustainable housing to promote a safe and vibrant community.
New via MawsonKerr Architects
Thanks to the invitation we received from the team at The Architecture Project, we had the opportunity to travel to the city of Aarhus, Denmark, and meet with Kazuyo Sejima during the Aarhus School of Architecture conference in August 2016.
Winner of the 2010 Pritzker Prize and founder of SANAA (Sejima + Nishizawa and Associates), Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima talks to us about the importance of white in their designs, with the intention of bringing and diffusing natural light to all the spaces. Sejima also describes how their buildings are able to integrate and bring people together through open spaces that connect, in an almost extreme way, the interiors and exteriors.
Review more of Sejima’s work here.
London Design Festival 2016: in this exclusive movie produced by Dezeen for MINI, the brand’s Oke Hauser explains why they worked with architect Asif Khan to install plant-filled pavilions across east London. (more…)
Thanks to the invitation we received from the team at The Architecture Project, we had the opportunity to travel to the city of Aarhus, Denmark, and meet with Kazuyo Sejima during the Aarhus School of Architecture conference in August 2016.
Winner of the 2010 Pritzker Prize and founder of SANAA (Sejima + Nishizawa and Associates), Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima talks to us about the importance of white in their designs, with the intention of bringing and diffusing natural light to all the spaces. Sejima also describes how their buildings are able to integrate and bring people together through open spaces that connect, in an almost extreme way, the interiors and exteriors.
Review more of Sejima’s work here.
Unfurled House is a home located in Petersham, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. The contemporary home was designed in 2016 by Christopher Polly Architect. Unfurled House by Christopher Polly Architect: “An articulated two-storey volume is sensitively stitched to the rear fabric of a Federation masonry and hipped envelope to provide significant additional freedom for the owners and their children to grow into. Environmental, cost and planning values entailed in retaining..
The project is the result of the Waiting for Revival Competition organised by the Transylvania Trust Fundation aiming to transform the spaces of the castle into workshop areas and one multifunctional hall.
The brief required not to intervene onto the existing historical structure in order to carry out a full restoration at a later date. Consequently the design was conceived using a set of independent installations.
The design aims to bring back spacial qualities belonging to the castle before it fell into disrepair. We functionalised the existing spaces for the Arts and Crafts Workshops and at the same time we tried to give the former ruin a sense of place. The collapsed vaults were recreated using a lighting installation consisting of a series of light bulbs hanged from the ceiling. We designed the smaller space of the main hall with intimacy in mind. The work area’s installations make the space functional for metal and carpentry workshops and at the same time illuminate the distinctive features of the space. All the pieces were built on site by local craftsmen and volunteer students during the two week long arts and crafts workshop held at the castle at the end of august 2016.
Sig Nordal 