Residential development Cäsarstraße 7 Cologne

A residential building designed by Manuel Herz with 18 condominiums was built on an approx. 1,600 m² plot in Cologne-Bayenthal. The outdoor facilities were designed by L I L S P A R L A, landscape architects, and the complex was completed by the end of 2017.

The sculptural façade is one of the architectural features of this striking corner development and is accompanied on the street side by a lively, vigorous border of flowering shrubs: various hydrangea species accompanying the path and evergreen privacy screens to the terraces, made of glossy medlar and fragrant eleagnus. This gives the extravagant building a calm transition to the street space - urban liveliness paired with dignified elegance.

A group of three swamp oaks links across the intersection to the tree population of the park at the Mathias Church and also connects the now closed perimeter block development to the different urban typology of the loose residential development opposite.

The situation is different in the quiet garden courtyard to the rear, which is completely underbuilt with an underground garage. Here, the meandering structures of the façade were adopted in the design of the outdoor facilities, and the language of the façade was continued with orthogonal terraces and boundaries of the planting and corresponding design of the play area. The play equipment to be provided (including coloured wooden trunks) playfully corresponds with the large planted specimen trees.

All ground floor apartments have access to the garden courtyard via private, generously sized garden terraces, delineated by loosely placed flowering shrubs and rhododendron plantings, with an otherwise very calmly kept accompanying planting of grasses and isolated specimen shrub groups.

In contrast, the additional garden house was given a more contemplative outdoor space with two ginkgo solitary trees and tier-cut black pines over large-scale, light-coloured concrete slabs.