With its strategic and beautiful location in the northern region of Germany on the border zone to Denmark the city of Flensburg has very attractive qualities. This very special place has through an impressive history developed a certain atmosphere and a unique urban character you only find here, in Flensburg. The Danish origin of the city still leaves its mark on the demography, where up to 20% of the inhabitants are Danish. Even more carry Danish surnames. This creates a mix of people that gives the city a natural cultural diversity. Together a city with a fantastic potential to grow and evolve to a very modern and living city offering the best and most modern ways of living. 

Placed on both sides, at the end of the Flensburg Fjord, the historical city overviewed a scenic hilly landscape alongside the Fjord and trees rising over the city. Through the last many decades the city has grown in area covering parts of the rich landscape of the hillsides with miscellaneous suburban development. The future demands for new ways of living; denser, collective, sharing, biking, walking, more green, productive. In other words: Sustainable. A future aiming to preserve the amazing landscape qualities of Flensburg as nature and public recreational areas.

The landscape in and around Flensburg still holds preservable attractions such as the Volkspark and the Water tower. Both are attractions not only for the inhabitants of the city but also for visitors. The Volkspark with its recreational values and activities, the Water tower with the impressive view of Flensburg and the surrounding territories. These two attractions have a direct closeness to the competition site.

The questions are: How can we create an eco-friendly development with a unique identity suiting a wide variety of people? Can we preserve the qualities of the green hillsides as part of Flensburg and at the same time build new dense developments? Can we create a site specific strategy that adapt to the context and add value to the environment?

We propose a dense, intimate, small scale village structure that underlines the qualities of the hillside landscape. Build up from the idea of pixels, the plan is superimposed with a grid of 6 x 6 meters creating squares of 36 m2, and divided into a few amount of flexible plots.  Each building is composed of 1, 2, 3 or 4 pixels, all with the dimensions 6 x 6 x 3,5 meters, creating housing units from 36 – 144m2. The small scales and heights connect, along with the diverse layout of the buildings, to the surroundings - uniting the city. Where the new development is highest, the buildings only consist of 1 pixel, and will over time be perceived as ‘mini’-towers between the large trees. This creates a clear hierarchy between the dominant Water tower, the landscape and the trees, and the new development. The buildings are organized on plots with private and semi-private gardens all accessible from a single central public street winding through the development. The central street connects the pond and internal common niches from the Water tower to the steep slope. Where the new development meets the adjacent landscapes, housing units and private gardens are drawn back and the edge of the urban fabric frayed. These landscapes - connecting to the slope towards south and the Volkspark and Water tower - will be transformed into common facilities, Urban farming, for the entire new development. These areas also create a safe friendly bike and pedestrian connection through the competition site.

This overall system is prepared to work as a living organism in the process and is adaptable to different futures. Students, singles, families and elderly, and even cross connections - ‘network families’ – will live together, next to, on top of or underneath, in smaller or larger groups and families, in a fabric mixing the qualities of the ‘Gartenhäuser’ and the historical Flensburg city streets.
The new urban structure adapts to the surroundings by integrating the scale of the nearby garden houses. Breaking down the scale of the new housing area and mixing it with green elements, makes the development seem as a pixilated reinterpretation of the Flensburg landscape. This dynamic, sloping structure will now act as the new “landscape” in which the old Water tower is displayed and emphasized. The pixilated structure can be influenced by the context and adjust itself by dissolving towards the landscape to the north and south and defining a clear distinction between the new development and the surrounding housing and garden housing areas to the east and west. Reacting clearly to the contextual conditions, this concept can be re-used many places in Flensburg.