Dietenbach Quarter, Freiburg (DE)

What should Freiburg’s new Dietenbach quarter look like? In order to clarify this question, the city has announced an urban planning competition in which 28 offices from Germany and abroad took part. “That was,” says Franz Pesch, city planner and chairman of the jury, “the Champions League of urban planning.”

Our urban development concept for the Dietenbach quarter rests on two pillars: a dense public access network and a small-scale parcelling of the building land. Public open spaces, tenant gardens and pocket parks inside the block create attractive, lively meeting places for the approximately 500 inhabitants of a block. Five neighbourhoods, each consisting of six blocks, form the Dietenbach quarter. The basic structural module of the new Dietenbach quarter is a 100 x 200 meter block, which integrates the most diverse forms of use and living, building types and structural densities. Families and singles, children, young and old, locals and immigrants live here. Urban artisans, self-employed and service providers work here. The number of storeys, graduated house sizes and façade setbacks, as well as the residential and commercial uses on the ground floor, create a variety of urban atmospheres.
The centre of each neighbourhood is an urban square with community facilities and space for markets and festivals. An urban boulevard ring, the “Dietenbacher loop”, connects all five neighborhoods. The “Red Mile”, the urban space in the northwestern section, is an attractive shopping street. Centrally located in the neighbourhood, a large, natural park – the “Green Ellipse” – offers outdoor recreation, encounters, and sporting exercise on foot and by bike. The wide “Blue Boulevard” makes “learning”, “sport” and “cultural life” visible in the street space through the transparent facades of the school, sports hall and cultural centre. Cafés, restaurants, shops and businesses on the ground floor of the block edges invite people to stroll and stay.

Client: Stadt Freiburg
Architecture: Dietrich | Untertrifaller with Schulze + Grassov ApS
Competition: 2018
Area: ca. 880.000 m²

Partner
landscape: clubL_94 Landschaftsarchitekten, Köln / urban planning: StetePlanung Darmstadt / energy: Transsolar Energietechnik, Stuttgart / rendering: Expressiv, Vienna