In a prominent location on the corner of Garmischer Strasse and Ridlerstrasse, a new office tower has been built in recent years – whereby "tower" here means that the building complies with Munich's high-rise guidelines: in 2004, it was stipulated that no new building may exceed a height of 100 metres. 

The new building, named "Der Heimeran", is just over 50 metres tall. In terms of urban planning, it closes off the corner of the Mittlerer Ring above ground, which disappears into a tunnel from here and only reappears shortly before the Donnersberger Bridge. The low-rise existing building along Garmischer Straße was converted and integrated into the new building. An adjoining office building at right angles to it on Ridlerstraße completes the block perimeter. Visually, this creates the base for the high-rise building that rises directly at the corner. Above the basement, 13 storeys rise into the sky. The ground floor connects to the two low-rise buildings, and the floors above stack up – three floors each combined into a "cube", twisted around the building core by a few degrees to create open spaces on the outside – on the 5th floor there is even a roof terrace with a small café. At the very top, on the 13th floor, there is a large roof landscape.

The sizes of the floor levels vary – ranging from 300 to 400 m² – but are all on the same axis and have the same floor plan. Floors 5, 6 and 7 follow floors 2 to 4, slightly offset from the previous trio and the central service core. This is followed by floors 8 to 10 and 11 to 13. These staggered three-storey sections lend a certain lightness to the high-rise building, which is very moderate in height. On the one hand, the building appears as the head building of Ridlerstraße and Garmischer Straße, which meet here, and on the other hand, it is also, in a sense, a gateway to Munich's inner city, which is enclosed by the "Mittlerer Ring" traffic artery. Depending on the viewer's location, a different picture emerges – from the south-west, from the Mittlerer Ring, the high-rise appears to be stepped upwards – from the north-west, from Heimeranplatz, the rotation of the individual segments can be perceived. Hidden behind the façade of the high-rise is an additional new building that connects the two flat blocks on Ridlerstraße and Garmischer Straße like a clasp. This creates a polygonal structure and – as a kind of "side effect" – an atrium and inner courtyard. The construction period for the three building sections with their 7,500 m² of office space was six years, from 2016 to 2022. 

www.osa-muenchen.de

Photos:
OSA Ochs Schmidhuber Architects Ltd.

(Published in CUBE Munich 04|23)