A mixed quarter of living, working and leisure is currently being built around the Kaiserlei roundabout in Offenbach based on plans by Eike Becker_Architekten. A hotel, swimming pool, fitness center, retail outlets, manufacturers, and a day-care center will ensure a high quality of life in the district. The two former office towers of the Siemens Power Plant Division will be completely gutted and converted into modern apartments according to the Vertical Village concept, with 6 to 7-story residential buildings grouped around them. The quarter also sets new ecological standards: a geothermal plant will supply around 70 percent of the area with CO2-neutral heat, and the buildings will draw on photovoltaics and solar thermal energy. The 3.5 hectare property is located directly on the city border to Frankfurt, making the Frankfurt city center, the new ECB and the airport easily reachable within a few minutes by car or public transport. A total of around 1,100 rental apartments will be built in the Kaiserlei Quartier, thereby considerably relieving the Frankfurt metropolitan area's extremely tense housing market.
Neighborhood development
Among architects and project developers, neighbourhood development is the ultimate discipline. Because it is essentially small-scale urban planning, everything that is important in the urban development of a city must also be taken into account. In addition, neighborhoods are ideal for testing innovative solutions to future issues on a small scale. These can include civic participation, CO2-free energy supply, smart city concepts, e-mobility, or sharing economy models. Because a neighborhood is more than the sum of its parts, all levels must mesh perfectly: In order to provide a common home for the diverse societies, housing types must appeal to all age groups, strata, and nationalities. At the same time, there is a need for attractive commercial concepts that not only cover the daily needs of those living there, but also attract people from outside into the neighbourhood. There must be restaurants and cafés, leisure activities and playgrounds where children of different backgrounds learn from an early age that origin does not matter. Young and old, living and working, rich and poor, calm and liveliness, tradition and modernity must have a space next to each other. Ordered, but not too ordered. This is the formula that makes our cities and neighbourhoods worth living in.
