Goodbye vacancies: Hamburg students create apartments in the office!

Goodbye vacancies: Hamburg students create apartments in the office!

In the middle of Hamburg's empty office space, an innovative project opens up new perspectives for the housing market. There are currently more than 700,000 square meters of unused office space in the Hanseatic city, while many city residents wait in vain for affordable housing. This discrepancy mobilized a group of students who founded an architecture collective called “vonwegenleer”. Together with supporters from HafenCity University, they developed the idea for the pilot project “Pop-Up Living – Hidden Living Potential”, which was designed as a response to the housing shortage.

The concept envisages temporarily converting empty office space into living space. As part of their final thesis, the students transformed an office floor into a shared apartment for four weeks. On 150 square meters there was not only space for sleeping places, but also a functioning kitchen and a bathroom. The positive response to the redesign is reflected in a 2024 study, which confirms that many people could definitely imagine living in converted offices. According to the results, around 160,000 households could be interested in shared living.

Issues of living space and conversion

Professor Dr. Thomas Krüger from HafenCity University emphasizes that there is a significant need for living space in Hamburg. Around a third of city residents already live in very dense living conditions. The high rents, which often eat up 30 to 50 percent of net income, urgently require tangible solutions. The "Pop-Up Living" project, which was implemented as part of the federal program "Sustainable Inner Cities and Centers", offers a promising opportunity to transform vacant space into valuable living space.

Conversions of office space into apartments have so far been rare in Germany, with the exception of Frankfurt, where the number of space conversions has more than doubled in the last 15 years. There, the proportion of living space resulting from such projects is around 33 percent. In Hamburg, on the other hand, conversions are only slowly gaining momentum, despite the economic advantages that conversion brings with it. The average price per square meter for the conversion is between 1,700 and 2,200 euros. This means the costs are almost 50 percent lower than for new buildings.

Challenges and opportunities of transformation

Of course, there are also challenges during the conversion, starting with technical circumstances such as adapting the building's statics, through legal hurdles and economic considerations. Complex approval procedures for changes of use can lengthen these processes unnecessarily. However, the “Pop-Up Living” pilot project has gone through a simplified approval process, which underlines the success of the initiative.

Given the trend towards home offices and the increased demands for sustainability, there is an urgency to develop creative solutions for the use of vacant properties. Vacant office space could not only be used as living space, but also in other social functional areas, such as schools or health centers.

Planned strategies for the future

Despite the positive approaches, there were also setbacks. A move by the CDU to convert office buildings into living space was rejected by the urban development committee, while the Altona district office is planning to build apartments on commercial land. However, these plans are met with critical voices from the Hamburg economic authority.

The "vonwegenleer" group is determined to carry forward their ideas and convert more office buildings into living space. The growing initiative could help not only combat the housing shortage in Hamburg, but also contribute to reducing CO₂ emissions and revitalizing urban spaces. Innovative conversions can be a promising answer to the pressing challenges of the housing shortage in Germany.

For more information about the project and the background, please read the articles on ndr.de, jll.com and a-way.io.