Werksviertel | München, Bavaria, Germany | 2023

Architects: steidle architekten GmbHa
Design Team: Johannes Ernst, Manfred Erich, Bernd Jungbauer, Stefan Kissling, Jan Kretschmer, Simone Krieger
General Contractor: Timo Schneckenburger
Client: OTEC GmbH
Photographers: Ivana Bilz

Urban Planning
The Werksviertel Munich, Germany, is the development of a former industrial site into an independent quarter for residential, commercial, social, and cultural activities with open public spaces for events and other forms of entertainment, carefully curated by the main owner, the OTEC.

The Werksviertel is connected to the core of Munich by the Ostbahnhof in the north, the Kusterman Park in the west, residential quarters in the south and commercial areas in the east and functions as urban interface.

The existing activities are to be gradually cultivated, consolidated and updated, while new developments are initiated at the same time. Urban diversity, spatial events and programmatic innovation are the focus of the design work, which is joint by several European architecture studios - steidle architects as leading architects and urban planners.

Housing will be integrated into the overall urban concept of the Werksviertel as a further, unique urban building block. Two factors are of crucial importance: the use of the ground floor as an active interface between public and private space, as well as a broad mix of living space typologies. Only when added together the actual value emerges: a new piece of modern, sustainable city, the Metropolitan City of Munich!

Sustainibility
The close integration of the functions of living, working, culture and leisure leads to short distances and thus the avoidance of motorized, individual traffic. The direct connection to the train network, the subway, S-Bahn and tram as well as the bus system also enables optimal accessibility for external visitors to the district.

Social sustainability is similarly supported. The update and further integration of uses and users into the new district prevents unnecessary movements.

In order to act as sustainably as possible, it was decided to preserve a large part of the buildings and put them to new use. Calculations showed that 85.028 tonnes of building materials were taken over from existing buildings in Werksviertel-Mitte by 2030, including concrete, steel and masonry.

In total, 42 percent of the existing building fabric in Werksviertel-Mitte was able to be preserved.

The mandatory use of durable building materials such as brick and wood does not focus on quick profits, but rather on durability and stability. Intensively green roofs mown by sheep not only improve the sometimes dramatic “Heat Island” problem through their natural cooling - they also reduce the energy consumption of the buildings above the norm.

Sustainable energy supply is guaranteed through werkkraft GmbH, built into an existing former factory building. The own energy center consist of two CHPUs that produce electricity, heat and cold and distribute it in the district via its own underground infrastructure. This type of energy supply, which is not very complex in building and pipeline construction, turns out to be a serious alternative to the vulnerable supply from large suppliers.

Since 2022, the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering and Organization has a project hub in Werksviertel-Mitte to develop new ideas for sustainable neighborhood solutions at the interface between research and practice.