Franklin Village

  • Location:
    Mannheim, Germany
  • Type of use:
    Residential
  • Year of construction:
    2023
  • Size:
    8560 m²
  • Project sponsor:
    Vera Hartmann
  • Principle of fail addressed :
    Uniform Architecture, Short-term Responsibility, Resource Ignorance, Social Ignorance

The Social Answer

The Benjamin Franklin Village was once one of the largest residential areas of the US armed forces stationed in Europe. By 2025, a district for around 9,000 people is to be created here through conversion and redensification, with a variety of uses ranging from work, care and training facilities to cultural, leisure and recreational opportunities with four new buildings.

Why SHIFT selected this project

  • Necessity: Responds to the need for inclusive, affordable housing, especially for marginalized families and individuals with assistance needs.
  • Affordability: Includes subsidized housing and communal spaces shared cost-effectively across residents.
  • Simplicity & Appropriateness: Uses hybrid timber construction and passive ventilation to reduce energy use and overreliance on technology.
  • Sufficiency & Efficiency: Reduces heated building volume via outdoor access design.
  • Scalability: Designed with modular timber grids and local supply chains to enable easy replication.
  • Beauty: Reimagines military barracks through sustainable timber forms and expressive colors for local identity.
  • Unique Principle of Success: A strong social mix and deep community integration through participatory design and active neighborhood management.
  • Limitations: Added cost in construction and rent, due to rising material costs, and in equal distribution due to the cost of the communal area.

A Social Living Space

Franklin Village is a project dedicated to the issue of socially oriented living spaces. It is a residential quarter that focuses on the needs of families whilst also keeping a wide variety of target groups in mind. It was designed for tenants who are otherwise displaced from the market, and for people with and without assistance needs.

Extensive consideration was given to the inclusion of future residents in the future use of Franklin Village. To this end, it was essential to include those “target groups” in particular, who would have special added value in their lives, in the overall concept from the outset. With regard to all those people with “assistance needs” who have found a new home in Franklin Village, numerous personal discussions were held regarding the furnishings of the future rental apartments and the specific individual adaptations. The same applies to individual families and neighbors. In the future, they too should benefit from the work of the “neighborhood association” currently being founded and the social space management. The project initiators of the Innovatio Group have also broken new ground in the selection of the ambulatory disability assistance provider.

The individual apartment lettings were carried out by the project developer Innovatio itself. This made it possible to achieve an ideal mix of applicants for the project as a whole. From the outset, the aim was to achieve the greatest possible mix in the neighborhood. Together with the neighborhood manager, the planned neighborhood association “Franklin Village” will take the lead in questions of future community life and mediation. In addition, there is a neighborhood app specially developed for Franklin Village, which all residents can use to network in everyday life.


Pioneering Design Based on Timber

As a timber construction with hybrid timber ceilings, the project also has a pioneering and exemplary character in terms of construction technology and ecology. The axial grid of the timber frame construction forms a structural basis that enables a high degree of floor plan variability. In this way, a variety of apartment sites can be implemented economically, corresponding to the space requirements of different living needs and offering adaptation options for the future.

Four new buildings, grouped around a shared inner courtyard, take up the existing typology of linear buildings on the former barracks and interpret them in a contemporary way. The existing building is also extended in timber and the cladding face the district’s central green space.

The aim is to bring the mix of ages and life stages among the resident closer to the normal social distribution. The architecture is seen as an emotional anchor for identification with the residential area. Various communal areas form the heart and catalyst of the community life. In addition to a communal room and kitchen, the neighborhood forum offers workshops, a co-working area, a playroom, a large terrace and a barbecue area on the roof garden for all residents.

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