Berlin housing scheme designed with zigzag facade

David Kohn Architects and Nord Studio have won a competition to design a residential block in Berlin with a zigzag profiled facade. London-based David Kohn Architects and Berlin-based Nord Studio collaborated on a design for Lützowufer Berlin, which draws inspiration from the links between German and British architectural culture. The 75-home apartment block, for developer Euroboden, will be seven storeys tall. Its defining features will be a facade of angular bay windows forming a zig-zag profile, clad in terracotta tiles and pressed metal panels. A grouping of three large bays will mark the building's communal entryway. Positioned near industrial buildings from the 19th century and postmodern housing, the development is designed to respond sensitively to its context. Many of the apartments will have open fireplaces, while the communal rooftop garden area will be punctuated by terracotta tile-clad chimneys and rooftop lanterns.The roof profile will create a silhouette that mirrors both the chimney of a nearby factory, and the profile of Burghley House, a sixteenth-century country house in England renowned for its ostentatious profile that the architects also cited as a reference for their design. When complete, the block will have a range of studio apartments, garden maisonettes, two and three bed apartments, and penthouses. David Kohn Architects is one of nine architecture studios creating a purpose-built design district on the Greenwich Peninsula, in London. Other projects by the studio include a house extension elsewhere in the capital, in the shape of a fox.