Student housing cooperative Studentendorf Berlin (EN)

Studentendorf Schlachtensee, a post-war modernist housing ensemble in Berlin, offers a rare longitudinal case study in cooperative student housing: from its founding as a US-American–German “reeducation” project, through decades of neglect and the threat of demolition, to its rescue through the founding of a housing cooperative and its eventual designation as a national heritage site. The first part of the workshop traces this history — including the cooperative’s later expansion to Studentendorf Adlershof — and asks what it can teach the wider field of student housing cooperatives.

The second part of the workshop focuses on the cooperative’s financial framework: its financing structure, its challenges, and its approach to long-term planning. A recurring challenge is the scarcity of equity capital inherent in the cooperative model, compounded by regulatory frameworks such as Basel III, which classify construction and expansion loans as higher-risk. Leasehold arrangements offer one response to this constraint.

Drawing on the wider European context, the third part of the workshop examines how other student housing cooperatives govern themselves — the different models of democratic member control they have developed — and what these examples teach about balancing self-governance with the demands of growth.

Based on this comparative view, the talk returns to the cooperative’s own experience of scaling, asking how far the model can grow and where it meets structural limits. It considers where the cooperative model offers a genuine advantage over conventional development, and where its limits lie. The workshop closes by considering what this history can contribute to contemporary debates over student housing and its impact on student cities.