It’s billed as Germany’s largest pre-war cooperative housing renovation project.

With a built area of 15,000 sq m, the 12 buildings were originally built in 1966.

They’ll be redeveloped with prefabricated façade elements to reduce on-site construction time.

All apartments will be brought up to KfW Efficiency House 55 standard (EH 55) to achieve carbon-neutral building operations on a net basis.

Insulation, windows and electric shutters will be added to the façade on site, with flat roofs re-insulated and sealed, a photovoltaic system installed directly into the grid, and larger covered balconies replacing the existing loggias.

The completed project will cut annual CO₂ emissions by 190 tonnes.

Emanuel Heisenberg, Ecoworks’ founder, said: “This flagship project involving twelve buildings demonstrates the enormous potential of serial renovation for decarbonising the existing building stock.

“Our extremely high degree of prefabrication makes an efficient, fast and carbon-neutral transformation of the housing sector scalable.”

An estimated three-quarters of German residential buildings require energy renovation work, but under 1% are renovated each year.