Space to Grow – Extensions to the Family Houses of the SOS Children’s Village, Brandenburg an der Havel

Susanne Hofmann

The extension of the family houses at the SOS Children’s Village in Brandenburg an der Havel reflects Susanne Hofmann’s way of working: architecture emerges from careful listening, systematic research into atmosphere and the translation of everyday experience into spatial qualities.

Following an analysis of the existing buildings and an extensive participation process, the houses were extended with single-storey timber-frame additions. Each new structure connects two existing buildings and creates additional space for children, caregivers and shared family life. The village-like character of the ensemble is preserved and spatially strengthened.

In the participation process with children, young people, the SOS Children’s Village families and client representatives, the users were involved as experts of their own everyday lives. Their wishes revealed the need for differentiated spaces between retreat and community: more areas for play, private niches and atmospheric places. Images such as a “sunset room”, a “creative romp room” or a “space world” became references for light, movement, shelter and imagination.

These images were translated into concrete spaces. Each extension accommodates two children’s rooms, a caregiver’s room with shower bath and an angled play corridor. A central built-in element with seating and play niches turns this corridor into a place in its own right, linking the existing building with the new extension.

Participation is therefore not an addition to the design process, but its starting point. The extensions create room to grow without giving up the familiar structure of the children’s village. They show how needs, memories and wishes can become architecture: protective, communal and carefully developed from the existing fabric.

Project Gallery

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Susanne Hofmann DE

https://baupiloten.com/de
Feurigstrasse 54 | 10827 Berlin