Berlin Tour Reaps Benefits for OHBA Members

BY MICHAEL COLLINS-WILLIAMS

Over the past decade, OHBA has implemented a successful educational and professional development program through its International Housing Study tours, examining some of the most innovative and interesting housing and development projects around the globe. Destinations have included Iceland, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands. The objective is to learn from the best and the brightest in the world—not just by sitting in a classroom or attending a conference, but by meeting directly with international academic, research, architectural and business leaders, while exploring new communities to gain a true appreciation for how they look, feel and function.

This past May, 25 OHBA builder and developer members travelled to Germany for the 2023 edition of the OHBA International Housing Tour. Over the course of four days in Berlin we crisscrossed the city, visiting numerous neighbourhoods and development sites. The tour kicked off in the parliamentary district with a walk through the cupola, the glass dome built over the renovated Reichstag, designed by architect Sir Norman Foster following the reunification of Germany. Much of the tour was focused on reunification and the stitching of the city back together through development projects and urban renewal in areas where the Berlin Wall once divided the city. It has helped reimagine entire districts in the city centre that were for three decades a vast no-man’s land between the Berlin Wall and a second set of fortifications dividing not simply East and West Berlin, but the free world from communism.

Housing tour guests enjoy a welcome dinner at Tiergarten Park.

Tour participants spent three days with our guide and Ticket B architect Richard Ollig, who shared his experience and expertise with the group. We visited numerous mid-rise intensification sites in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood, including interior site visits of some spectacular projects with unique multi-storey-unit layouts, such as the IBeB (architects: ifau, Heide & von Beckerath). The route through the inner city combined various aspects of contemporary urban development,

A mass timber project in Kreuzberg.

Berlin has two main centres—one each in the former eastern and western parts of the city. The housing tour visited the commercial centre in the west of the once-walled city before travelling to the east to Rummelsburg Bay, which is undergoing radical changes. Where ice blocks were once stored and coal shipped, new innovative working environments, studios and residential neighbourhoods are emerging from the industrial past. The volume of construction and change in this thriving European city is incredible.

Berlin is rich with attractive mid-rise developments.

A huge brownfield revitalization at Rummelsburg Bay.

Our tour concluded with a full-day mass-timber mid-rise construction tour. OHBA visited a number of neighbourhoods with mass-timber construction, among them the brand new Holzhaus Linse (Scharabi Architekten) that features movable walls that residents can adjust based on evolving circumstances. There was also a site tour of an under-construction building where members of the development team took us through a detailed technical overview of the Dresdener housing project (architects - Schulte Frohlinde/ZRS).

Checking out ultra-efficient interior designs.

The tour capped off with a special evening dinner cruise on the River Spree through the centre of Berlin, passing by many of the sites that we visited. With an objective to cross-pollinate innovative ideas in terms of sustainability, urban design and architecture with our European counterparts, there was a bounty of takeaways for tour participants. These international housing tours enable OHBA members to engage in trans-Atlantic business opportunities and professional development to learn from the most innovative projects in global cities like Berlin.

Views fro the group's farewell cruise.

Outside the Reichstag Building.

OHBA would like to thank our Housing Tour sponsors and partners: EnerQuality, Building Knowledge Canada, In2ition Realty and Reliance Comfort. And we would especially like to thank our tour delegates for spending four days travelling with us in Germany to visit some of the most innovative developments in the world.

Stay tuned for details on the 2024 tour destination!

—Michael Collins-Williams is the CEO of the West End Home Builders’ Association