Turning existing buildings into the future. THE NEWFRANKFURT
2,500
apartments by 2031
23
qualified buildings
up to
1,800
school places
6
years of implementation
Partners
The challenge
A housing shortage is real.
Affordable housing decides who gets to work, study and grow old in our region. Four examples.
The nurse
Works shifts and cannot find a home from which the early shift is reachable without a car.
The family
Moved away because four rooms in the city became unaffordable. Now both parents commute back every day.
The apprentice
Has the job but nowhere to live. The company has been looking for two years because young people cannot move here.
The neighbourhood
Offices stand empty and nobody is around in the evening. What is missing are homes, a school and places to meet.
The four situations stand for many others across the region.
The Real-World Lab
The real-world lab for the second life of large buildings.
THE NEW FRANKFURT is the Frankfurt framework in which serial revitalization of existing buildings is tested: time-limited, transparent and under real market conditions. Office to housing, energy retrofits, hybrid use, education and 3rd places. Tested on real buildings along Mainzer Landstraße.
Put simply: empty office floors become homes, schools and places worth staying in.
- Office. Housing. 3rd Places.
- Insurability. Bankability. Operation.
- Recycling & reuse in existing buildings
Do the math yourself
How much housing is hidden in the vacancy?
Move the sliders. The calculation uses only the ratios from our own programme frame, not industry averages. Your input never leaves your browser.
202,500 m² of office space converted · 172,125 m² of residential space
2,459
apartments
1,770
school places
2.2 %
of the housing needed by 2040
Programme target THE NEW FRANKFURT: 2,500 apartments
That takes 15.3 % of the vacant office space.
Where the factors come from: 70 m² per apartment and 0.72 school places per apartment follow from the programme frame (175,000 m² of residential space, 2,500 apartments, up to 1,800 school places). Vacancy and the housing needed by 2040 are taken from market data for Frankfurt am Main. The factor from office space to residential space (0.85) is a preliminary assumption and will be verified through screening in the real-world lab.
Do you hold a building like this?
Check in a minute what it could become, then submit it for screening.
OPEN EXPO35 · FrankfurtRheinMain
We have everything. In 2035 we show it to the world.
THE NEW FRANKFURT is a real-world lab for serial revitalization of existing buildings, and the FrankfurtRheinMain region’s bid for the World Expo 2035, OPEN EXPO35, is on its agenda. The Expo does not start with a site, it starts with the first project: visible change in existing buildings.
Put simply: in 2035 we show the world how a region rebuilds what it already has instead of building new.
Discover OPEN EXPO35Newsroom
Not announced. Under way.
Talks, events, publications. The lab does not start on paper in 2026, it has been under way for a while.
Oct
Sept
Sept
Contact Persons
The people behind it.
Peter Pawelski
Initiator and Founder
Real-world lab architecture, owner dialogue, strategic partnerships, bankability approach and public positioning.
Maximilian Deutschmann
Co-Initiator
Technology, science and regulation in the real-world lab, concepts and speaker engagements.
Get Involved
Become part of THE NEW FRANKFURT.
Contribute a building, look for space, provide capital, take part as a public authority or as a researcher. Choose what applies to you and we take it from there.
Get involved now