Aldi plans to build 2000 apartments above its supermarkets in Berlin. Would you live in one?

Aldi-Nord has found a unique solution to Berlin’s current housing crisis: to use the space above and around their supermarkets to build inexpensive housing.

According to a Tagesspiegel article, the discounter wants to build 2000 new apartments in roughly 30 branch locations around Berlin. These will include their two flagship projects which are already under construction on Sedanstraße in Lichtenberg and Silbersteinstraße in Neukölln.

Aldi predicts that by 2019, a further 200 apartments will be built – 30% of them reserved for social housing. With 50-60,000 new Berliners moving here every year, it’s predicated that Berlin will need 194,000 new apartments by 2030. So Aldi has a lot of work to do.

Are you paying too much rent in your apartment? Find out here if your landlord is illegally overcharging you.

Whilst Aldi are leading the way here, this is all part of a Berlin initiate to find better uses for the single-level commercial units and large car parks which arose in the spaces left by war damage. And supermarkets like Aldi are a perfect example of these, where the space above and around the buildings could be better utilised by helping to solve Berlin’s housing crisis.

Plus, building up your stores is a way out of paying any financial levees the government might place on what it considers wasted space in the future.

With this in mind, will Bio Company, LPG, Lidl, Edeka and Rewe follow?

Better not McDonalds though… One McWohnung please.

What do you think? Would you live in an Aldi-brand wohnung?

Illustrations courtesy of William Wires Fine Art.