Quartier Wettiner Platz, Dresden

PORR’s Dresden branch acted as general contractor for the construction of a 7-storey block of flats, three urban villas in a leafy inner courtyard, a boutique hotel with 132 bedrooms and an underground car park on a site of just under 8,000m² in Dresden. The new urban quarter along Schweriner Strasse has created 177 flats and around 1,000m^² of retail space on an area of 14,000m². The hotel adjoins the building at a right angle and overlooks the leafy Wettiner Platz.

Housing meets culture

They are only 800m apart: the Zwinger Palace, one of Germany’s most prominent baroque buildings, and the Dresden Mitte power station, an impressive industrial monument whose functional brick façades are a world apart from the palatial splendour of Saxon Elector Augustus the Strong. After years of standing vacant, the power plant site on Wettiner Platz was chosen to be the new creative heart of the city. Today it houses various institutions, including the State Operetta Dresden and the Junge Generation Dresden theatre, an event location, a museum, studios and co-working spaces.

Due to the building’s direct proximity to this listed complex, the client held a competition for the design of the new façade along Schweriner Strasse. Six architectural firms participated, and the Dresden-based firms dd1 architekten and h.e.i.z. Haus, architektur + stadtplanung emerged as the winners. The hotel and the three urban villas were designed by the Hamburg-based firm MPP MEDING PLAN + PROJEKT GmbH.

In harmony with the historic building fabric

It was important for the façades to blend in with the Wilhelminian style of the surrounding area from an urban planning and architectural perspective. The block’s façade is extremely long, 150m, and so it has been divided up into very small partitions. Differently coloured clinker brick slips on the ground floor, plaster finishes with different textures and natural tones, and matching colours for the uPVC windows echo the neighbouring clinker and sandstone architecture and ensure that the building appears less bulky. The hotel’s clinker façade was inspired by the Mitte power station. The relief structure and the various natural tones of the clinker bricks help to integrate the building into its historical context.