Guiding system for colourful living

2018 bachelor thesis
Students: Yannick Brückner and Andreas Neumann
Supervisor: Prof. Christiane Nowottny and Uli Matheus

People repeatedly come into contact with inclusion in their everyday lives; this is also important so that society can deal with it.

It is not only about the integration of disabled people, but much more about inclusion as a whole, because every person has the right to move freely and to be heard. But inclusion can only work if everyone participates and helps, be it in school or at work or in general in leisure time or in one’s own family and environment. And this is exactly what the project “Buntes Wohnen” aims to create. Colourful living stands for inclusion, for living together people of all kinds, whether with or without disability, people are people and that is the focus of colourful living.

For this reason we are particularly proud that we can be a part of it and can also contribute to making people feel comfortable and do not have to experience any restrictions, because we were allowed to create the guiding system for colourful living.

Task

For the new inclusion residential project “Buntes Wohnen Heilbronn GmbH & Co. KG”, an approximately 2,800 square metre site on the site of the former Heilbronn Südbahnhof station was acquired on 4 December 2015.
The seller was the Heilbronn housing estate. The aim is to create a form of living in which people can live together in any conceivable form, such as students, families with or without children, the elderly, single people or people with disabilities who live together. A living without barriers – whether structural or human – and nevertheless a protected and communicative form of living for all is created. The “green living room” is formed by a 400 m² inner courtyard. With its seating, it will serve as a place of communication and lived inclusion for all residents of the house, but also offers individual opportunities for retreat. Further meeting rooms are planned, which are deliberately placed on the ground floor instead of in the cellar.

The building is accessible from the east side and the west side, so the building has two different staircases with separate residential units. The housing units have to be provided with names and initials in order to create a structured overview. The idea behind “Bunte Wohnen” is that all living spaces and floors are structured differently, so that no flat and no apartment look the same. This results in the difficulty that each floor has to be designed differently. There was also uncertainty as to how to get from the underground car park to the stairwell and which apartment number is located on which floor. bWhen determining the destination, we agreed with the client on the concerns, content and desired results. The essential task is to find out which design service reflects the client’s goals. It is important to us that there is a continuous exchange about the common understanding of the situation. As designers, we have often had to work persuasively, which requires empathy and understanding for the respective situation. The result of the target setting is to understand what the client wants to achieve with the resulting service and how we as designers help with our specific competences and abilities.

Yannick Brückner and Andreas Neumann