R50

Nineteen households pooled as a Baugruppe, hired two small offices, and built a six-story house in the middle of an ordinary Kreuzberg block. The move everyone remembers is the balcony: a continuous open walkway wrapping every floor, so the whole building shares one long porch. Below, a garden; inside, a workshop, laundry, and a roof terrace; the apartments themselves were delivered simply and finished by their owners.

What to steal: the scale. R50 is the proof that the courtyard-block instincts — shared circulation you actually meet people on, common rooms instead of bigger flats — work on a single infill lot with nineteen homes, no master plan required.