City simulation

Multi-storey residential buildings with an urban look

In the north-east of Munich, surrounded by the districts of Herzogpark, Oberföhring, Johanneskirchen and Englschalking, lies Prinz-Eugen-Park, one of the former barracks areas that have now been converted into residential quarters. The new residential park covers 29.7 hectares. Following the demolition of the military buildings, a good 4,000 people were to find a new home there from 2011 and 1,800 apartments were to be built. The park is divided into a western part with urban development and an eastern part with small-scale development, the so-called ecological model settlement in timber construction.

In an invited competition in 2015, the architecture firm AllesWirdGut Vienna/Munich won first prize for the two plots at the upper north-eastern edge of the development area. For the municipal housing association Gewofag, the architects planned the new construction of four buildings on two plots at the northern entrance to the district, directly on Cosimastrasse. To the north and south of Ruth-Drexel-Strasse, 261 subsidized housing units and a proportion of privately financed apartments were built by 2019. Two daycare centers for 110 children were also built. The four complexes contain 40 one-, 97 two-, 41 three-, 47 four-, 30 five- to six- and six seven- to eight-room apartments. All four buildings have an L-shaped design and are offset from each other - two smaller ones to the north, two larger ones to the south - so that they each form an inner courtyard, landscaped by landscape architects Club L94 from Cologne.

The architects' design idea resembles "a shelf that creates order", as they themselves put it. This means that the façades with their uniformly arranged window openings of different sizes create a calm image. Concrete and clinker brick façades alternate: a white plastered façade section is followed by a rust-red one clad with clinker brick slips. This creates the impression of narrow, heterogeneous individual houses lined up on the outside, forming an urban landscape. On the sides of the buildings facing the inner courtyard, there is a changing play of colors due to the differently painted deep recesses of the extended stairwells, which form open terraces and serve as communication areas. They act like atriums to the inside and at the same time offer themselves for lively diversity, which the residents can create themselves.

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