Commendation at the Hessian State Prize “Exemplary Buildings in Hesse 2026”

The housing project “Gemeinsam Suffizient Leben” (dgj228) of the Wohnbaugenossenschaft in Frankfurt am Main eG has received a commendation in the architecture category of the award “Vorbildliche Bauten im Land Hessen 2026 – Staatspreis für Architektur und Städtebau”. The prizes were presented on 20 October 2026 at the Hessian Ministry of Finance. From 106 submissions, the jury shortlisted 23 projects and awarded five state prizes and eight commendations.

The four-storey timber building on Friedberger Landstraße in Frankfurt’s Nordend district stands on a narrow leftover plot. It contains nine flats, a shared kitchen, a guest room and a daycare centre. At 27.8 m² per person, private living space is well below the German average. Shared spaces make up for the compact flats. The load-bearing structure is a timber frame without metal connectors, which can largely be taken apart again.

The jury highlights that the community idea held up when the project passed from a building group to the cooperative as client, and calls it an exemplary project of community building in transition.

To the project: https://dgj.eu/en/portfolio/dgj228-gemeinsam-suffizient-leben/
Jury statement (German): https://www.architektenkammer-hessen.de/baukultur/preisverleihung-2026/dgj228-wohngruppe

Photo: AKH / Christoph Rau