The social housing estate was designed and built between 1999 and 2002 by Hinrich Baller, architect in Berlin and emeritus professor at the Academy of Arts Hamburg (HfbK).
The Nuthe Estate in Potsdam has to be considered as Hinrich Baller’s masterpiece. It’s not only an exemplary urban design on a nearly impossible site, but also built as an architecturally diverse landscape with continuous greenery and a watercourse. The site is long and very narrow, running alongside a highway, with a GDR-style housing estate on the other side. The Biotope City Foundation documented this exemplary work—nota bene in social housing—years ago with a detailed article by Hinrich Baller himself on Biotope City Journal. https://biotope-city.net/gartenparadies-potsdam-nuthesiedlung/ . He protected the new Nuthe neighborhood by creating open parking garages on the side of the expressway, thereby creating a kind of hilly landscape. On the other side, he demarcated the neighborhood with a watercourse that meanders through the entire property. Hence the neighborhood’s name ‘Nuthe Snake’ as a nickname.
