The Paragon Apartments lie north-east of the intersection of Prenzlauer Allee and Danzinger Strasse. The new quarters, with 217 premium rental apartments, a kindergarten, a café and an organic supermarket, mediates between the urban qualities of the Prenzlauer Berg district and the adjacent park-like surroundings. Paragon augments the block without closing it entirely, and presents a unique hybrid of perimeter block and open building. The development comprises one renovated building and two newly constructed buildings.
The starting point for the Paragon Apartments is a former hospital building located between Danziger Strasse and Fröbelplatz, that was built as a school in 1912. Its roof was dismantled and replaced with two new upper floors.
GRAFT developed an efficient housing cube for the project: a 2-room apartment cube with a size of 37.5 m² that forms a repeating module. The apartments in the new building on the Danziger Strasse have balconies of varying depth. The flexible concept of the cubes allows them to be combined to create larger apartments – up to 250 m² – for the replacement roof structure on the old building. As such, the basic modular element the new building – its DNA so to speak – appears to emerge from the structure on the Danziger Strasse and continue on over the rooftops towards the Fröbelplatz, integrating the old and new buildings into an ensemble.