Drafting a concept for the central areas of Munich's city center means designing an organizational structure for future developments. How does this location allow for urban development without the inflexibility of large-size structures or the exclusive continuity of existing ones? The strategy of our concept aims at organizing space programmatics and at activating the process of urban development. The objective of our concept is to create a balance between the greatest openness and flexibility of structure possible and a compact and integrated urban space. The central railway area today constitutes a kind of outskirts within the city. Over a distance of 7 kms, radically different urban spaces meet. Compact inner city changes with remaining areas appearing peripheral. The expanses of landscape parks encounter compact residential quarters. The concept meets the characterists and diversity of these spaces and transforms them into a shimmering field of urban intensities. Difference becomes the guiding principle of the city.

Central Railway Areas

Site Munich
Project open urban and landscape-architectural
competition
Client Deutsche Bahn
Planning 1998/99
Prize purchase and invitation to further elaboration
Cooperation P4 Berlin, Szamatolski+Partner

Use and Activities
Each urban and open-space area is attributed a framework of urban activities which is derived from the position in the urban structure. The character of an area is defined through its mixture of living and working as well as its degree of urban intensity. The result is an urban space with sequential density of events structured by lines of movement and floating open spaces. Landscape and urban areas exist next to each other in their own right and create a rhythm of open-space and building typologies which facilitates variability and the experience of different spaces, textures and activities over the entire area.

Urban Morphology
The building structures chosen are to establish typological features and selectivity between the individual urban areas without limiting the achitectural conversion too much. In fact, basic principles were applied which result from a contextual analysis of Munich city blocks. The three principles texture (interweaving), block (transformation), and solitaire (grouping) with their different density features are tranferred to the individual urban areas. The result is a space-saving urban structure of high compactness and density in the building areas, which forms an exciting contrast to the open spaces.